Zwift – Page 2 – Serenity Through Sweat

Formidability

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I found this study scrolling through my news feed and wanted to share and reflect on it with you.

It seems like there has been a recent push in our culture to think about gender and gender norms. Maybe that is the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon (the topic of next week’s post). Or maybe it is a genuine societal interest.

Since becoming a father to two boys, it is something I think about in the context of explaining masculinity to them. What does it mean to be a man? Is there even a good working definition.

The study by Mitch Brown and Ryan Tracy was titled “Preliminary evidence for neck musculature in shaping functional stereotypes of men’s relationship motives” the article covering the study was titled “Men’s neck musculature informs perceptions of parental abilities and interest in long-term relationships”

The researchers sought to find out how men with muscular necks are perceived as compared to their less muscular counterparts.

Matt brown said, “I became interested in this particular topic in two ways. First, I had a growing interest in the signal value of men’s formidability and how it shapes perceptions of their social value. With a growing understanding of parental motivational systems, I thought it would be pertinent to understand the possible tradeoffs associated with formidability that we see in other domains, particularly related to the protection of offspring at the expense of nurturance,”

He also said, “For neck musculature, I became interested in the topic both after seeing data from Neil Caton about the evolutionary value of neck musculature and some of my own me-search. I’m a former wrestler who has tried to have a beefy neck my whole life!”

As a nerd who reads and blogs about scientific papers, a fellow grappler with a beefy neck, and a father who is looking to teach his sons about perceptions of masculinity, this study checks all the boxes.

The researchers presented a series of images to a group of college students from a university in the south eastern United States.

The images were all of the same man, but, were digitally altered to vary the size of the trapezius muscles. This minimized variables, which may otherwise confound the participants perceptions.

Participants were asked to rate their perceptions of the men (varying i.ages of the same man) on fighting ability, interest in long-term vs. short-term mating, and effectiveness at protecting and nurturing offspring.

Men, or the computer enhanced version of this particular man, were perceived as better protectors and more interested in short-term term mating the larger and more muscular their neck was.

The counterparts with the smaller trapezii (I don’t know why, but I really like that word) were perceived as more nurturing and long-term mating partners.

Brown again, “Men’s neck musculature is informative in shaping perceptions of men in terms of their relationship preferences, Namely, large trapezius muscles connote greater interest to perceivers in promiscuous mating strategies and a disinterest in the conventions of biparental investment (e.g., monogamy, offspring nurturance).”

The study seems to have been well carried out. There are no glaring flaws in the methodology, the data analysis, or the conclusions.

This was a study focused on perception. I like to think that with a few exceptions, perception is reality. But, like the top button of my work shirt clamped around my beefy wrestler neck, those perceptions chafe a little.

The size of the trapezius muscle was used as a metric for formidability. The researchers’ previous work showed an inverse relationship between perceptions of protection versus nurturing offspring with changes in perceived formidability.

It has been a stereotypical and archetypal role for males to be protectors. There are obvious exceptions to that rule, but biological sex differences make that an easy principle to understand.

I would argue that nurturing falls under that role. Without nurturing, your children will never be able to protect themselves. Isn’t that the ultimate form of protection we want to provide? To teach them to do the job and pass it on to their kids after we are gone.

These are obviously stereotypes and perceptions. The best way to change them, is to confront them head on. To be the nurturing dad with the beefy neck.

Collecting jerseys on this round of zwift

I wrote a piece a while back that I think talked about formidability in a round about way. “In order to be peaceful you must be capable of violence. If you are incapable of violence, you aren’t peaceful, you are harmless”

I think for both mental and physical well-being, being peaceful is essential. That would mean being capable of violence is essential. Wrestling and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are my outlets for violence.

The word has such a negative connotation, but thought of in the context of formidability, protection of offspring, and a necessity for peace reframes it nicely, I think.

I don’t want to be in a cultural discussion about gender norms. Rather, I want to be an example. For my boys, for their friends, for the other parents in our social circle.

Musculature (around the trapezii or otherwise) and being a good father are not mutually exclusive. Perceptions may be reality, but they can be changed, one sweaty, beefy, good natured parenting neck at a time.

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

Science

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week, I want to talk about science.

What is science? Why is it important? How do we verify or approve the results? Is all science good science? These are important questions. Questions, which may not have definitive answers. Just like good science, the answers and insights are not fixed, but rather, continuously evolving.

I take in a lot of salt. That might go against some of the established medical advice regarding blood pressure and heart health, but I do so deliberately and with “scientific” justification.

So when I read the following study, I wanted to share it and explain my thoughts and interpretations. You know, for science.

The title of the paper reads, “Middle-age high normal serum sodium as a risk factor for accelerated biological aging, chronic diseases, and premature mortality.”

The study took blood draws of participants in middle age in years one and three. The blood draw was taken after 8-12 hours of fasting. The blood draw was measured for average serum sodium levels.

The thought process behind this methodology is that average serum sodium levels taken two years apart would provide a baseline for hydration.

Your hydration is regulated to a very tight range by two primary mechanisms in the body, thirst and antidiuretic hormone (ADH).

When you lose water through sweat or fail to take in enough water, the concentration of sodium (among other things) increases in your blood. This triggers the release of ADH which results in less volume and more concentrated urine.

This has led to the guidelines from health organizations to check the color of your urine to gauge your hydration status.

The study followed up with participants after 25 years to assess all cause mortality, biological aging, and chronic disease. The participants were broken down into three categories based on their average serum sodium levels, (a proxy for hydration) optimal, high and low.

So far the authors of the study have a solid hypothesis, (based on previous findings done initially in mice) a good methodology, and an easily identifiable and measurable variable to track.

However, the results (raw data) and the interpretation of those results, start to go a little off the rails.

“Lowest mortality rate was among people with 137–142 mmol/l serum sodium (26.2%, n = 8604), with increased mortality in 135–136.5 mmol/l (39.3%, n = 122) and 144.5–146 mmol/l (34.5%, n = 397) groups.”

“Kaplan–Meier survival analysis gave similar results showing increased mortality rates among people with serum sodium less than 137 mmol/l and greater than 142 mmol/l (Fig. 1e). In Cox proportional hazard time-to-event analysis adjusted for age, sex, race and smoking, serum sodium 135–136.5 mmol/l was associated with 71% increased risk of all-cause mortality, and 144.5–146 mmol/l increased risk of premature mortality by 21% in comparison to the 137–142 mmol/l group (Fig. 1f).”

“Interpretation:
People whose middle-age serum sodium exceeds 142 mmol/l have increased risk to be biologically older, develop chronic diseases and die at younger age. Intervention studies are needed to confirm the link between hydration and aging.”

Lets start out by saying that everything they said in their interpretation is factually correct according to their data.

However, the data suggest a higher risk of all cause mortality, in the low sodium when compared to the high sodium group. (39.3% vs. 34.5% and 71% vs. 21% respectively)

71% vs 21% is a huge difference in your likelihood of all cause mortality. Their own data indicate that the low serum sodium group was at significantly higher risk than the high serum sodium group when compared to the optimal range.

Over hydration, or lack of the required sodium intake, seems to be significantly more hazardous than under hydrating or over consumption of salt. Obviously the optimal range is optimal, go figure. The study results focus on the high sodium side, which was more hazardous than the optiMAl range but an order of magnitude less deadly than its lowernsodium counterpart.

I am a heavy sweater, as you may have guessed from the blog title, my closing remarks, and most of the topics covered. I also know that my sweat is very electrolyte heavy. This can be measured in a lab, or anecdotally, by seeing salt crystals on your workout gear after your sweat dries.

Appropriate hydration and electrolyte replacement are essential to everything I do from triathlon and jiu jitsu, to flying and parenting. You aren’t going to get very far physically or mentally if you are dehydrated or your electrolyte balance is off.

Like we mentioned earlier, this study started off with a good hypothesis, methodology, and the right variables. The data set was robust, and the study should be repeatable. These are all hallmarks of “good science”

I would classify the interpretation as somewhat missing the point. Mayne the the reporting omitted the more important or the more significant finding, maybe it was biased toward a specific outcome.

I don’t know the authors. I dont know the editors. I dont know their advisors or bosses. I don’t know their funding, their political leanings, or their personal inclinations. Frankly, none of that matters. Science is not partisan. It is cold, unemotional, and calculating.

While I believe you should “trust the science” (as we have heard so often these past few years) I also believe, in the wise words of President Roosevelt, you should trust but verify.

In this case the science was good, the interpretations less so. Knowledge is power, and sometimes that power needs to be mined with cognitive effort, ingenuity, and a little sweat. (As long as you replenish fluids and sodium 😉

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

Uncertainty

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week, I want to revisit one of the main language characters we visited a few months back, Claude Shannon.

It’s somewhat odd calling Shannon a language character. I was first introduced to his world reading about lifespan and longevity. His work was used as an analogy to demonstrate a point, even though he did do some work in genetics.

Shannon was a mathematician, an engineer, a teacher, and a tinkerer. He is considered the founder of the modern technology age. He did work in World War II on code breaking, and on communication, but he was not a language person in the way we typically think about language.

Shannon was more concerned with the idea of transmitting and receiving messages, more so than actually constructing them. (As language folks tend to obsess over).

Shannon’s breakthrough work was the mathematical theory of communication, which broke down sending information digitally. I’m not a mathematician. Most of the original work (which I purchased) is gibberish to me. But, I can understand the concept, and it is profound in its breakdown of communication to an elemental level.

I talked about one of the aspects of his world in a post from last November (Noise). But this week I wanted to talk about uncertainty.

Shannon starts with the idea of flipping a coin. The outcome is either head or tails. This communicates to us a binary choice. The answer to the question, what happened in the coin flip, can be be expressed as a binary digit or ‘bit, one of two options.(yes the bit you are familiar with if you’ve used any computer technology in the last 40 years is Shannon’s idea from the 60’s)

Shannon quickly noted though, that the coin flip is perfectly random, unless the coin is weighted. In which case one outcome is more likely than another.

He then went on to show (all of this mathematically of course) that most of our communication is very heavily weighted. Because of our rules of grammer, syntax, phonology, and morphology, the next letter and the next word is highly dependent on the one that precedes it.

This was a highly useful realization and skill when Shannon was working in cryptography as a code breaker, but I think it means a lot to us as everyday communicators.

“for the vast bulk of messages, in fact, symbols do not behave like fair coins. The symbol that is sent now depends, in important and predictable ways, on the symbol that was just sent: one symbol has pull in the next.”

“As Shannon showed, this model also describes the behavior of messages and languages. Whenever we communicate, rules everywhere restrict our freedom to choose the next letter and the next pineapple*” “Because you’re completely aware of those rules, you’ve already recognized that ‘pineapple’ is a transmission error. Given the way the paragraph and the sentence were developing, practically the only word possible in that location was ‘word’ “

So much of what we say is predetermined, by custom, by ritual, by routine. When it is time to actually say something outside the norm, it is easy to falter. To struggle to find the right words.

As I mentioned earlier, Shannon was an engineer. He was concerned with designing a system to effectively and efficiently transmit messages. In pursuit of solving that problem, he taught us a valuable lesson about constructing messages.

“what does information really measure? It measures the uncertainty we overcome. It measures our chances of learning something we haven’t yet learned. Or, more specifically, the amount of information something carries reflects the reduction in uncertainty about the object”

“Why doesn’t anyone say XFOML RXKHRJDFJUJ? Investigating that question made clear that our “freedom of speech” is mostly an illusion: it comes from an impoverished understanding of freedom. Freer communicators than us, free of course in the sense of uncertainty and information, would say XFOML RXKHRJDFJUJ. But in reality, the vast bulk of possible messages have already been eliminated for us before we use a sentence or write a line.”

If information reflects the reduction in uncertainty, that should be one of, if not the primary focus of our communications. Especially those novel ones that break from ritual and routine.

Think about 20 different people practicing basketball individually on a court. There are bound to be some collisions, some balls bouncing off each other at the rim, and maybe even some injuries. An aviation training area can be very similar. Multiple individuals, in a confined area, with different agendas.

In aviation, we make position reports both procedurally in certain airspace, and in high volume uncontrolled areas. Those reports need to resolve a lot of uncertainty in order to avoid disaster. A good formula is who you are, where you are, and what your intentions are.

If you know John is working on 3 pointers from the corner, and Phil is practicing layups, you can now decide how and where you want to practice, without disturbing, or being disturbed by, the fellow ballers. A tremendous amount of uncertainty has been resolved. That is valuable information. Much more concrete and actionable than, John and Phil are playing baskstball.

Last few runs before returning to the Florida heat

This, of course, is a task much easier said than done. To make all, or even most, of our messages precise enough to overcome the maximum amount of uncertainty, requires a novel concept. Thinking before we speak.

What information do I have? What information does the receiver of the message need. What do they expect to hear? What uncertainty needs to be overcome?

There is no shortage of uncertainty in our world. Overcoming even a small amount of it will lead to happier humans. And I’m sure there is serenity to be found along the way.

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

Wandering

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast on meditation, and he referenced an interesting 2010 study out of Harvard that I thought was worth sharing.

“A wandering mind is an unhappy mind” by Matt Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert details their study into happiness and day dreaming.

This weekend I’ll be racing in the Gulf Coast Ironman 70.3 event, and I was particularly interested in this study and its interplay with endurance sports.

A quick stop in Murphy and a trail run at lake nottley before work

The Harvard based researchers designed a web app and recruited participants to self report their levels of happiness and what they were thinking about.

Participants were prompted to use the web app at randomly assigned times during their waking hours. They were asked what they were currently doing, how happy they were on a 0-100 sliding scale, and what they were thinking about with four options.

Participants could report thinking about; what they were doing currently, something else positive, something else neutral, or something else negative.

Taper week training run through the Bellevue botanical garden

Participants would be surveyed 1-3 times daily until they opted out, which resulted in a significant data set. The researchers made sure to vary their participants across age ranges (18-88), gender, countries, and occupation.

The results showed some interesting insights into the human mind and happiness. What participants were thinking about turned out to be a significantly better predictor of happiness than the activities themselves.

In other words, being present in the moment, thinking about what it is you are currently doing, will likely make you happier than letting your mind wander to something else, even something pleasant.

Taper week training on a multi day Seattle layover

“multilevel regression revealed that people were less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not, and this was true during all activities including the least enjoyable. Although people’s minds were more likely to wander to pleasant topics (42.5% of samples) than to unpleasant topics (26.5% of samples) or neutral topics (31% of samples), people were no happier when thinking about pleasant topics than about their current activity, and were considerably unhappier when thinking about neutral topics or unpleasant topics than about their current activity (Fig. 1, bottom). Although negative moods are known to cause mind wandering, time-lag analyses strongly suggested that mind wandering in our sample was generally the cause, and not merely the consequence, of unhappiness.”

“In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”

Enduring anything is as much a mental/emotional battle as it is a physical one. While covering the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and 13.1 mile half marathon, there will be plenty of time for my mind to wander.

Sometimes that mind wandering is helpful and even desired. There is a unique state of clarity and creativity that becomes available with extended physical exertion and an empty mind that is free to wander.

Other times it is important to center yourself on the task at hand, even if (or especially if), it is unpleasant. I’m reminded of the acid burn scene from fight club.

Edward Norton’s character wants to go to his cave and find his power animal. Brad Pitt’s character slaps him to bring him back to the present moment.

“This is your burning hand, it’s right here. Don’t deal with it like those dead people do, Come On! What you’re feeling is premature enlightenment. This is the greatest moment of your life and your off somewhere missing it.”

“A cognitive achievement with an emotional cost” is an extremely astute observation with some very powerful ramifications. Being able to dissociate from difficulty is a valuable survival mechanism. But being present, feeling that pain and difficulty, is the best way to learn. It is a tightrope walk for sure, but one worth walking.

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

135lb hangover

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I spent a large portion of the past weekend traveling. While that is pretty normal for my job as a pilot, this was a different kind of travel. A real, planes, trains, and automobiles adventure.

El Duderino, Speedy, my wife, and I all headed out late Thursday evening on a flight to Atlanta. Arriving well after the boys bedtime, we went to a hotel located a short walk from the airport sky train.

After a restless night of sleep for all four of us we were up and at em, picking up the rental car and out of the hotel before 9 AM. We stopped to pick up a U-Haul truck, and then made very carefully timed subsequent stops at both IKEA and Sam’s Club, enroute to our new home in North Carolina.

We had to stop at the realtor’s office to sign closing paperwork after the two and half hour drive. All of this had to be done before 2PM so we could take possession of the house before the county offices closed for the weekend.

Only an optimist can put together a plan like that. There were so many moving pieces. So many variables outside of our control. Somehow, like a rare celestial alignment, everything worked out wonderfully and we spent the weekend in our new home.

On the two and a half hour drive, winding through the mountain roads in a crosswind catching U-Haul box, I heard Bert Kreischer tell Joe Rogan a story that struck a nerve in me.

Bert was telling Joe how he watched one of his wife’s friends, a middle aged woman whose stunning beauty had started to fade, struggle to get a bartenders attention.

The moment Bert described was probably fleeting. He doesn’t say how long she was at the bar, or how long it took her to get the bartender’s attention. But he gives an eloquent and detailed description of her confusion. The puzzled look on her face. Her inability to process why the bartender is not immediately paying attention to her.

He realizes, this is a new experience for her. As a younger head turner, this was never a problem she had to deal with. And, she has yet to come to the realization that she is no longer that person.

Joe Rogan spouts out a quote from Socrates that he is apt to use in similar situations, “beauty is a short lived tyranny”.

The whole thing made me think about my wrestling. I was very successful and adept as a high school wrestler at 135 lbs. And my wrestling base, and instincts, and movements, have served me very well in life and especially in Jiu Jitsu.

But, there is always a big glaring but. My wrestling in Jiu Jitsu, especially with a gi on, bears a striking resemblance to this former beauty at the bar. Misunderstanding my current place in the pecking order. Over reliant on a skill set that has faded. Unable to recognize the need to evolve and adapt.

Running off the bike, getting ready for IM 70.3

I’m not sure why it took me this long to see it. Maybe it was egotistical denial. Maybe there are enough alternatives in Jiu Jitsu where I could hide the deficiency. Maybe I was able to get away with old habits with less skilled opponents.

Either way, the bandaid has been ripped off. I refuse to be the bombshell at the bar, past my prime and confused about how things are changing around me. It’s time to learn again as a beginner. To embrace the potential for growth and get past my 135lb wrestling hangover.

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

Backcasting

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I was listening to the Huberman lab podcast and was introduced by guest Dr. Peter Attia to a concept called “backcasting” which I wanted to share with you.

Dr Peter Attia is a physician who specializes in extending his patients’ life span and health span. He went to medical school at Stanford and worked at both John’s Hopkins and the NIH. He recently authored the book Outlive and also hosts his own podcast The Drive on health and medicine. He is a pretty highly qualified guy in the space.

During the conversation with Huberman (another very informative voice in the space of health and wellness) he introduced the concept of backcasting with the following question. What do you want the last decade of your life to look like?

This is called the Marginal decade. “Delineate the objective function and break that down into metrics that we can measure” you can set the goal posts for what you want your marginal decade to look like, and work backwards to find definable goals and measurable markers and at what ages you need to hit them

What do you want to be doing in your marginal decade? Picking up a grandchild, getting up off the floor, have an athletic hobby. Living alone. Do you want to be paddle boarding, bicycling, still driving your car?

If I ask you what is going to happen next year you can predict certain variables and make some educated guesses. This would be a forecast. The period of time is fixed and defined. You don’t know when the last decade of your life will be. Even if you did, there are likely too many variables to forecast that far out. But you can backcast.

Start with the desired outcome and trace the markers you need to hit in order to reach it. Let’s say for example you want to be able to go for a brisk walk on the beach every morning in retirement in your 80’s or even 90’s. That sounds like a nice goal and not outlandish.

“The gravity of aging is more vicious than people realize and therefore the height of your glider needs to be much higher than you think it is when you are our age if you want to be able to do the things we probably want to be able to do when we’re ninety “

Studies show that VO2Max (your ability to process oxygen during aerobic activity) declines roughly 5% per decade after 30, almost regardless of exercise intervention. As Dr Attia so eloquently put it. You need a lot of altitude for that glider flight into your marginal decade.

Changes in peak VO2 with age (left) and percent change in VO2 per decade (right) in men and women. Source: Strait and Lakatta, 2013

A VO2Max of 35-45 is considered fair to good for males in their 30s. This can be tested very scientifically in a lab while wearing a mask on a treadmill, but many running watches or fitness wearables can give a pretty good estimation for general purposes.

From there the math isn’t hard to cary out if you are right in the middle of average at a VO2Max of 40 in your 30’s, by the time you are 80 it will be closer to 30.

Murtagh et al., 2002 (4), investigated self-selected speed of recreational walkers and their interpretation of “brisk walking”.

It turned out that the self-selected speed, which was between 1.55 and 1.6 meters per second, resulted in an exercise intensity of almost 60% of VO2max and a heart rate of 67% of the maximum. A “brisk” walking speed observed was 1.79 meters per second in a parc and 1.86 meters per second on a treadmill. The “brisk” walking speed equated to almost 69% of VO2max and 78.5% of the maximum heart rate.

By your 80’s in our example your VO2Max has dropped a full 25% (and that’s likely best case if you remained healthy and active for those 5 decades). And that brisk walk you wanted to take (4mph is the conversion) was already taking up 69% of your VO2Max. That means you are going to have to slow your pace considerably or reduce the duration of you walk to meet your goal.

Or as Dr Attia told us, increase the height of your glider now in middle age. If your VO2Max is closer to 50 or 60 in your thirties, that brisk walk (all other variables constant) in your 80’s is much more attainable.

The same benchmarks can be set for strength in individual muscle groups or specific movements. Squats, pushups, pullups, grip strength. Gravity is unrelenting, as is the “vicious gravity of aging”. The Stronger you are now and the more you continue to train, the higher you can climb the glider, and the longer you can stay aloft.

Backcasting gives you the tools to set yourself up for success, once you have defined what you want your marginal decade to look like.

So stretch out those glider wings and keep climbing. gravity is thus far undefeated, but that doesn’t mean you can’t prolong, and thoroughly enjoy the ride.

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

Loss

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This past weekend I competed in the Pan American Jiu Jitsu championships, and I wanted to share my results and my experience.

One of my favorite TV shows in college was scrubs. This was in a TV era where dvr technology had just emerged but I couldn’t afford it at the time.

New episodes of your favorite show aired at a certain time, on a certain day. If you weren’t able to watch it you had to wait till the episode reran. Or, maybe you were lucky enough to have a friend with a dvr and could watch it at their house.

This also gave rise to the spoiler, and the spoiler alert. Someone who watched the newest episode would inevitably want to discuss it with you, knowing that you were also a fan, but unaware that you hadn’t seen it yet.

My roommates and I watched a lot of scrubs. The show was humorous and heartwarming. I was never really concerned about spoilers. (Lost was another story)

Most of the show was narrated in the voice of JD, John Dorian. The main character played by Zach Braff who works his way as a doctor through the Sacred Heart Hospital and grows up along the way.

There are a few episodes which are narrated by his tough love mentor figure, Dr Cox. These episodes occur after Dr Cox’s botched vasectomy where he is having overly philosophical conversations with his infant son Jack, swinging in a baby rock n play. (Way more back story than you needed, but that was more for my trip down memory lane than anything else)

That image of a grown man, established and respected in his profession, bearing his soul to an unresponsive drooling baby swinging back and forth, is one I think about often with this blog.

It is a very one sided conversation, a monologue with a captive audience that is unable to respond.

It is also a beautiful moment of vulnerability and sensitivity for an otherwise rough and gruff character. Dr Cox bearing his soul to a child who likely won’t remember any of what is said.

A lot of this blog is directly or indirectly for my boys. That they might look back in time at the man their father was before they were able to understand such adult intricacies. I found myself in one of those conversations yesterday with El Duderino.

My wife had taken the boys to a birthday party while I went to the Jiu Jitsu tournament. I was able to join them after a rather unceremonious first round loss. By the time I got there El Duderino was in a full meltdown.

My wife scooped him up and took him home. I stayed with Speedy for another hour or so, letting him play while I caught up with friends.

We had a very nice rest of the evening as a family, bit when it came time for bed El Duderino was still struggling. There were lots of things I could have said to him. Things I know have worked in the past to calm him down. But I found myself giving one of those Dr Cox like monologues to a somewhat captive audience instead. (El Duderino had crawled into his trundle bed mattress while it was still tucked under his twin bed, I layed at the lengthwise exit so he was very much a captive audience)

I told him he seemed sad and upset. I told him I felt sad, and upset, and disappointed. I told him I had competed that afternoon and lost. I told him I fell short of my goals and expectations. I told him that good things can be born from disappointment.

I tried to boil my feelings down to a five year old, hiding under the bed, level. To put my disappointment, frustration, and anger into a positive light for El Duderino to see. To show him the soil that can be tilled for growth out of loss.

I don’t know if the lesson sank in. I may never know. I don’t think I was as gracious in loss as I ought to have been in the moment. Losing 0-0 by advantage is a tough pill to swallow. But there was a unique catharsis in sharing the emotions of my loss with my young son. I had never experienced that before.

I don’t like to lose. I am very fortunate to still be somewhat unaccustomed to it, after essentially thirty years of grappling. Still, I recognize the lessons to be learned. Even more so now that I am a father. I hadn’t competed in a Jiu Jitsu tournament in three years, and I hadn’t lost a competition match since having kids. It only felt right to share that with them, and I hope they can learn as much from it as I did.

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

Doubt

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I’ve signed up to compete in the Pan American Championships in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at the end of the month. That has brought with it excitement, anxiety, and doubt.

I’m no stranger to competing. And certainly no stranger to grappling or even jiu jitsu competition. I’ve completed in three smaller local BJJ tournaments, and I’ve lost count how many wrestling tournaments over a 13 year wrestling career.

I’ve also been active in triathlon and ultimate frisbee in those years I wasn’t grappling. Each had their own varying level of competition.

This one feels a little bit different. It will be my first grappling competition since before COVID. It will be my first competition at brown belt. I haven’t competed since I was a blue belt, missing out on competing at the purple belt level.

Anxiety and excitement are to be expected. I got the same butterflies and pit feeling in my stomach before every wrestling match and every big triathlon. But doubt wasn’t something I really thought about.

Maybe it is having kids (even though I’ve raced and competed in smaller BJJ tournaments as a father). Maybe it is getting older and being in the Masters 2 division. Maybe it is my lack of recent competition experience. Maybe it is the thought of injury now as a provider.

Whatever it is, doubt has been creeping in. Will I make the weight? Will I stay healthy and injury free? Will I perform in a way I can be proud of?

That doubt isn’t necessarily bad though. I’m reminded of a conversation I had about doubt, with two close friends at a bachelor party.

We were in a hotel room in Tampa. Sharing a drink, making small talk and getting ready for a hockey game. The celebrated bachelor wanted to read us the vows he had written and have the two of us help workshop them. I know, not your typical rowdy bachelor party story.

He is a scientist, a medical researcher, and one of the smartest people I have ever talked to. He is very methodical in his thinking and communication. All of those qualities came out front and center in his custom written vows.

“As I scientist I am taught to doubt” his message to his soon to be wife, on their most important day, began. “But I don’t doubt my love for you, or the relationship we’ve built”.

His vows went on with a series of “I don’t doubt” statements. Doubt seemed to me, at first, like an inappropriate word for wedding vows, but it fit perfectly with who he was. Doubt was part of his daily life as a scientist and researcher, but his marriage was a place doubt never crept in.

I modeled my own custom wedding vows, a few years later, in a very similar format. A series of “I can’t promise X, but I can promise Y” statements.

To me, this felt like the same removal of uncertainty, and exchange of promises, without the perceived negativity that doubt brings to the table.

Because that’s all doubt really is right? Uncertainty. As a scientist and a researcher, my friend is very deliberately, an active participant in his uncertainty. Trying not to bias his observation of data with his own opinions or desires.

The future is always uncertain. The degree of that uncertainty may vary, but it is never fully predictable. I think it is an old Yogi Berra quote “predictions are hard, especially about the future”

The doubt that has crept in since I’ve signed up for this competition has been an ever present feeling in the pit of my stomach. It has been my somewhat less than welcome companion. (And due to a small weight cut, sometimes the only thing in my stomach)

I’m trying to channel the courage of my friend and embrace that doubt. Uncertainty, just means I get to have a hand in writing out how the future will be told.

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

Bumps

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I have not been writing nearly as much as I want to.

There are dozens of excuses. Some are very understandable and relatable. Other are a niche of my particular hobbies and career lifestyle. Still others are very much first world problems.

None of that changes the fact that words are not making their way to paper. Or the digital equivalent o suppose. Thoughts are not being worked over and properly curated. Ideas wilt on the vine.

While I hope that you get something out of these musings, it is ultimately a selfish endeavor. One that helps me think. Reflect. Ultimately better understand my own worldview. To realize any changes that I need to make for myself or my family.

Dedicating the time to this pursuit is one of those changes. Alas, life has a way, of getting in the way. I noticed this same problem manifest itself on El Duderino’s daily scooter ride.

Nothing makes him happier than being picked up from school with his scooter. I’m not sure if it the the excitement of escape. The satisfaction of scooting. Or the perception Infront of his peers. El Duderino loves scooting home from school.

He takes off on a tear down the sidewalk, often times before I am done talking with his teacher and ready to start my pursuit.

He can be heard halfway around the block engaging his dragon power, or eagle power, or whatever the day’s inner monologue calls for.

He will scoot right into the open garage and then come back to look for me. Being sure to let me know how much he beat me by.

Occasionally he will stop for no apparent reason. He will abandon his scooter and walk back to give me a hug and tell me he loves me. Such unabashed emotion is powerful amongst men. I hope he never loses it.

Sometimes he makes the cardinal sin of racers. He removes his focus from the road ahead to look back and see how close I am behind him.

This is normally not necessary. I’m hard to miss since I’m prancing with his dinosaur backpack slung over my right shoulder. The leftover contents of his lunchtime trail mix shaking like a maraca in it’s tiny Tupperware. It is not by any means a stealthy pursuit.

This has lead, on occasion, to El Duderino wiping out pretty hard on some of the bumps in the sidewalk. Sometimes he can maintain composure and keep it upright. Other times it is a full yard sale crash.

Knowing that this happens. Knowing where and why it happens, I try to adjust my pursuit, lagging further behind El Duderino on the sidewalk sections with bumps.

When you are moving forward with some momentum small bumps in the road are little more than a nuisance. When you are moving too slow, they can derail you entirely. Especially if your focus is elsewhere.

I didn’t really need to see El Duderino eat it on the sidewalk to understand the concept. But it does have a way of illustrating it in living color. Bringing that idea right to the forefront. Screaming bloody knees and all.

Momentum is a powerful thing. Without enough of it, the smallest of bumps can totally derail us. But, we are also capable of squishing those obstacles like pennies on a train track.

I hope to be able to report fewer derailments, and more squished pennies going forward.

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

What doesn’t kill you

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I found this really interesting article through a link on Sunday’s with Sisson and wanted to share it with you.

The article discusses recent research into the longevity of ants. While this may seem inconsequential, or unrelated to humans, the findings are somewhat surprising and unexpected.

The first part of the article focuses on the relative lifespan of queen ants compared to worker ants. While there is significant variety amongst different ant species, queen ants tend to live significantly longer despite their increased metabolic functioning.

The queen consumes exponentially more calories due to the increased metabolic demands of laying thousands of eggs. The increased calorie consumption and metabolic functioning means significantly more insulin production. Increased insulin is linked to aging as well as a host of other diseases in humans and other animals.

These ants have evolved into social creatures where only the queen is reproductive. This has lead to some other evolutionary adaptations. When a queen is removed from the colony worker ants will change into “gamergates” or pseudo queens. They start eating more, producing more insulin, and becoming reproductive.

The researchers expected the increased insulin levels to lead to decreased lifespan. However, the insulin signaling in the gamergates deviated from the standard expression and led to increased lifespan.

“Further work showed that the ovaries of the gamergates strongly expressed a protein, Imp-L2, that ignored the MAP kinase pathway but interfered with the second pathway in the fat body. “This protein appears to have the function of protecting one pathway that allows metabolism, but inhibiting the pathway that leads to aging,” Desplan said.”

The second part of the articles describes a parasitic tapeworm that infects acorn ants as an intermediate host. The cestode lays eggs that are eaten by acorn ants. The tapeworm must live inside these acorn ants, that make their nest in a single acorn, until the ants are hopefully eaten by a woodpecker.

If a woodpecker eats an acorn that has infected acorn ants in it, the tapeworm then moves from it’s intermediate host, to it’s final host.

The infected ants are very easy to tell apart from the uninfected ants because their color changes from brown to yellow.

You would expect that the parasite infected ants would have a shorter lifespan, since the parasite is sustaining itself off of the host. However the opposite was observed.

Infected ants lived five times as long as uninfected ants, in part due to a cocktail of different proteins pumped into the ants by the parasite.

Researchers are working to distinguish, analyze and retest these various proteins and antioxidants to see if the results are reproducible outside of parasitic infection.

From an evolutionary and adaptive standpoint this makes a ton of sense. The parasite’s ultimate goal is to get to the woodpecker. The longer the ants live, the greater the chances that they will be eaten by a woodpecker. Increasing the host lifespan is in the best interests of the parasite.

Whether it is increased metabolic functioning to step into the queen role, or parasitic infection, for the ants in these studies, what doesn’t kill them makes them live longer. (Not coincidentally, the title of one of the studies that the article was based on)

On some sort of intuitive level didn’t we already know this. The individual protein pathways and antioxidants are compelling. I hope the research leads to new understanding and potentially even clinical, pharmaceutical, and lifestyle interventions. But there is so much more to a healthy lifespan than a protein cocktail secreted from a tapeworm.

I like to bounce around on this platform, ping-ponging back and forth between topics that pique my interest. But every post, regardless of topic, has some sweat in it. Challenges that push the body both physically and mentally.

There is a mental clarity and a physical calm that follows these efforts. (SerenityThroughSweat) but there is also the undeniable benefit, that what doesn’t kill us, helps us live longer.

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