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Sunday, December 31, 2017

New Morning.

Where walls meet and coffee cups are made.

An oblate spheroid has spun round one more time and orbited a giant fireball. Due to an arbitrary decision made a millennia ago, you woke up and a new year had begun.

Over the last year practically every cell in your body has been replaced and renewed. You are a new version of yourself but a year older. The atoms that make you up have been around since the beginning of the universe... and still you can't figure out what your new year resolutions should be.

An infinite number of possibilities brought you to this exact moment, most of which are unknowable. I am typing on a computer invented by someone in California, containing precious elements mined in Africa or Asia, which lay buried in the ground for millions of years, drinking a coffee farmed somewhere in South America, in a cup made of earth fired in a kiln, with milk from a cow in England, all made using a machine made of metal dug out of the earth and run using electricity burning in a power station somewhere, I'm sitting in a room where the walls meet at a perfect right angle, built before I was born by a person who was skilled at things I can't even comprehend how to do. All of this is one moment, all of those things took thousands of humans, thousands of years to perfect, it is beyond the imagination of just one person.

We want to see certainty, meaning, patterns, logic and reason, and when we don't the universe seems like it was built on shaky ground.

No i ching throwing, fortune telling, tarot card reading, astrologer will be able to make sense of it for you, there are just too many variables.

All these infinite events will coalesce into moments you will remember over the next year.

Fragments.

Through a grubby bus window the sun will hit the hoar frost on the fields, and for a second the prosaic and poetic collide and everything will seem perfect, as it should be.

Other times. The sun comes up like a piss stain streaked across an old tramps blanket. But you will still get up and start another day.

But most days are in the middle. Most conversations you will forget, in a lifetime only a handful will stick; same with people.

3am and you'll wake up haunted by things that don't matter and somethings that do, and there will be nothing you can do.

Fragments will spin out of your brain; driving into Reno in the sleeting rain, watching a hillside fire in the Mediterranean, standing under an aircraft wing sheltering from the rain, watching the bodies burn at Pashupatinath. What seeps out of your brain will be unique to you and meaningful to you alone.

Memories, are they what make you 'you'?
Kindness and Gratitude.

The year in review, a long list things you've forgotten. Then your own year in review, for me I didn't read Proust or War and Peace, I didn't write a novel, didn't even have an idea for a novel. Didn't start a PhD or MSc in Neuroscience or anything, didn't run more than a few miles, did no events. But then, be kind to yourself. I do live in a great place with a great partner and a great son, I met some good people and had some good conversations; went to some new places. Everyday life is full of highlights, a cup of coffee here, a laugh at work there. These moments form a life.

Don't go in with too many fixed ideas. What you thought were your goals, may not ultimately be the ones you need to pursue.

The only responses that seem to make sense in the face of all this chaos and stuff is to be kind. Be kind to yourself and others, in a world where we are all trying to be happy and make connections.

And gratitude, to be thankful for the little things that make make up each day and manage to puncture through the hardness of it all.

Try and find a sense of purpose in the moment, every moment. This does not mean everything you do has to be imbued with mystical meaning. The fact that the sun comes up, rain falls from the sky and we are in a nondescript corner of the universe where I'm writing this and you are reading this, despite all the other infinite possibilities of things we could have been doing is mystical enough for any one day.

Goals. The Why.

'comfort is overrated' see the video below.



Anything that involves learning something new or doing something new will be uncomfortable. People like the idea of speaking a new language. They can visualize themselves sitting in an Italian cafe conversing with the locals fluently, what they don't want to visualize is the hard slog of remembering verbs and making mistakes. Ultimately they don't want to look or feel stupid, which is probably the main reason most adults don't try new things or learn new subjects, the ego is fragile.

In the words of Zen fella John Tarrant Roshi

"There is no end to the suffering caused by comparison."

Whether that be comparison with others or comparing yourself to what you think you should be.

Why do those new year resolutions fail? Is it because people are stuck in the future goal, they don't like the process, it brings them no satisfaction. There is no real sense of purpose, except some vague idea of capturing their lost youth by weighing the same as they did when they were eighteen. The most satisfied people love the process of training, gym or running or classes, or whatever they are learning or doing.

It's the reason your 1 day or 7 day free gym trial wont work. People who take these out have no investment in the process and 7 days isn't long enough for them to start enjoying it. It is long enough to remind them they can't achieve anything in 7 days, their goal is harder than they thought, will take longer than they thought and involves something they don't get that much pleasure from. It reminds them of their mortality, that life is short and to give up and go and do something they do enjoy doing like watching Netflix or going to the pub.

The guiding lights for the next year:

3 principles as outlined by Richard Nisbett (2015:225) and which underlie Eastern thought:

1) Principle of change: Reality is a process of change. What is currently true will shortly be false.
2) Principle of contradiction: Contradiction is the dynamic underlying change. Because change is constant, contradiction is constant.
3) Principle of relationships(holism): The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Parts are meaningful only in relation to the whole.

Is it worth having a goal, or plans, or resolutions?

Here is a little exchange:

Dizang asked "Where are you going?"
Fayan said "Around on pilgrimage."
Dizang asked "What is the purpose of pilgrimage?"
Fayan replied "I don't know."
Dizang responded "Not knowing is most intimate."

Replace the word pilgrimage in the third line with the word 'goals', or 'resolutions' or 'relationshsips'.

If through all of the information, chaos, infinite decisions, fuzziness and confusion that life throws, you somehow become aware of a clear goal or subject or area of interest or something that sparks something in you; then go for it, cling to that life raft.

The burning questions and ideas that keep coming back to you, they are your life koan. The ones you carry around with you your entire life.

It's up to you, the most important thing is to enjoy the process, to find things that are satisfying, and mostly these are things that are out of your comfort zone. The years are spinning on, you are wearing down, but there are still infinite moments to enjoy, little things. You can always learn and renew.

You don't need to retreat to the woods to 'suck the marrow out of life' or 'to live deliberately', you can do it in everyday humdrum life and make it meaningful. You don't need someone elses list of goals.

And of course, sometimes the best thing to do is binge watch a TV series on Netflix and have a beer.

It's a new morning, a new day, a new beginning, a new moment. It always is.

Happy New Year, have a good 2018 or whichever year you are in.

"Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy. Great words are clear and limpid; little words are shrill and quarrelsome. In sleep, people’s spirits go visiting; in waking hours, their bodies hustle. With everything they meet they become entangled. Day after day they use their minds. in strife, sometimes grandiose, sometimes sly, sometimes petty. Their little fears are mean and trembly; their great fears are stunned and overwhelming. They bound off like an arrow or crossbow bolt, certain that they are arbiters of right and wrong. They cling to their position as though they had sworn before the gods, sure that they are holding on to victory. They fade like fall into winter—such is the way they dwindle day by day. They drown in what they do—you cannot make them turn back. They grow dark, as though sealed with seals—such are the excesses of their old age. And as they draw near to death, nothing can restore their minds to the light."
- The complete works of Zhuangzi, Burton Watson translation, Ch, 2, p.8 
Other references:

The idea of infinite unknowable things, pilgrimage quote and John Tarrant quote taken from a day workshop on Freedom & Intimacy by Kevin Jikai Pickard at Zenways.

Nisbett, R (2015) Mindware. Tools for Smart Thinking. Penguin.


Sunday, December 17, 2017

Give yourself a break.

It's that time of the year when half the population is eating their body weight in chocolate and promising themselves they are going to get fit and lose in January.

And another smaller group of people are panicking that they will not be able to go the gym on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, wondering when they will fit in arm day. And waking up in a cold sweat about their fat percentage increasing by 1% when the ambassador offers them one more ferrero rocher.

Why yes ambassador I will have another Ferrero Rocher (and tomorrow I will spend 3 hours in the gym guilt ridden).


This is aimed at the second group of people.

A break from training for a week or so will not make any difference unless:-

  • You are training for the 2018 Olympics.
  • You have a 100 mile race in late January.
  • You are stepping on stage and need to be contest ready in the middle of January.
If none of these apply give yourself a break.

A break will do you good.

This a good time for a deload week or two. Go easy, have some back off sessions, no heavy lifting, or if you are a runner some easy runs.

You may not be near your usual gym or usual running routes. Take some time to do something different. Do the opposite of what you normally do, if you normally lift heavy go for a jog or a run, if you normally do endurance work then do some body weight work or mobility.

If you normally train 4 or 5 times a week and can't guarantee your normal routine or you're not sure how many times a week you can train then go total body.

For example, pick one exercise from each of the following:

Vertical Pull
Vertical Push
Horizontal Pull
Horizontal Push
Quad dominant
Hip Dominant
Accessory - core/ arms/ whatever

Which could be something like:-

Latpulldown
Dumbbell shoulder press
Seated Row
Lunge or goblet squat
Leg curl or dumbbell RDL
Plank or some bicep/ tricep supersets

2-3 sets of 10 to 15 reps.

Or if you don't have access to any equipment then try a simple body weight routine:

Press up
Body weight squat

Do a simple a ladder up routine, 1 rep of each then 2,3,4,5,6 up to 20.

Other things to consider:

A simple Christmas mobility routine, you spend days on end sitting down in a chair or in car stuck in traffic or stooped over a stove (or over a pint), time to reverse posture.

Something like:

Cat camel
Bird dog
Downward dog
Updog
Spidermans with overhead reach
Half kneeling hip flexor stretch with over head reach
Sit back into hamstring/ half splits stretch
Finish in puppy dog pose.

This is the type of routine you can bust out in your Christmas jumper. (In fact I will film it later this week and post it up).

But most importantly - ITS OKAY TO TAKE A DAY OFF!

Think outside the box.

You are in a house that has been centrally heated to the same temperature as the Sahara. This is a chance to do some heat acclimatization training for that desert race you have been considering. Put on your running kit and rucksack and run up and down the stairs.

Mass building phase. Been trying to bulk up and put on weight but can never get enough calories in? Now is your chance, you should have protein and carbs coming out of your ears. For once you can hit those 6000 calories. Train hard up to until Christmas day, over reach as  much as possible, then sit back and let the super-compensation happen while you watch you favourite Christmas film. You are literally resting for mass. Your biceps and quads will be growing as you lay there with the meat sweats.

How much does that turkey weigh? Quick press it over head for maximum reps before putting it in the oven, a chance for a sneaky shoulder workout.

Always wanted to get photo shoot ready? Now's your chance. Go low carb for the week before hand. Then start drinking alcohol from 8am Christmas day, bucks fizz, wine and beer should dehydrate you nicely combined with the indoor greenhouse, then add in all those carbs. Next thing you know, your muscles have refilled with glycogen, all the water has been drawn out from under your skin, you will be pumped and ripped and all you need to do is find someone to give you a fake tan on Boxing Day and get ready for that photoshoot. (Ask for a fake tanning kit as a gift, problem solved).

Burpee drink penalty. Every time you have a drink do 10 burpees.

Exercise food label. Use your Christmas gift tags to label the exact number of minutes of exercise it will take to burn off the calories in the food. Yes, labelling every Quality Street or Heroes will take some time.

Sleep penalty. First person to fall asleep has to do 50 mountain climbers or is made to join a crossfit gym in the new year.

Christmas cracker exercises. Get those crackers that you can put your own gifts and jokes in. Instead of jokes put in exercise routines. What better way to start dinner than 25 jumping jacks.

Television penalty. If anyone mentions any soap opera christmas special, 1000 burpee penalty. Enforce this.

Exercise charades. You have to mime a sport and everyone has to guess which one. For crossfitters, WOD charades, you start doing a WOD and everyone has to guess which one, of course that is Kelly or is that Fran? Wear the crossfit gear you got as a present while you do this.

Weighted cups and cutlery. You can be working on your biceps all day long. A great stocking filler.

Baileys protein shake. Of course you can put Baileys in a protein shake. And yes, I've now decided this is a real thing.

Protein eggnog. See above.

Alternatively, relax. Don't be so hard on yourself. Go for a walk in the fresh air. Don't get too stressed. All your progress will not be undone in one week. Consistency always wins, if you're consistent the rest of the year, give yourself a well earned break and enjoy yourself.

Christmas dinner is basically lean meat and vegetables. And if you are in the UK Boxing Day is more lean meats and vegetables.

All the stats about people putting on weight at Christmas and never losing it are about sedentary people with crappy diets all year round.

And as long as you don't drink until your liver dissolves or eat until you go into insulin shock, you'll be okay.

And hey, there's always next year.

May the Kwanzaa-bot bring you everything you wished for.
Happy Christmas one and all.








Sunday, December 10, 2017

Getting Older (and training).

Do you need to train differently as you get older?

Recently there has been a spate of books and resources for the 'older' lifter, which the people providing these resources normally define as over 40. A few of them define it as over 30 or 35, which is of course laughable (these are normally the ones written by people in their 20's).

This trend seems to be because all the coaches writing these various programmes now find themselves in their 40's or 50's.

Full disclosure I haven't read any of the books aimed at the over 40 trainee or joined any of the online programmes ( I'm 43 by the way). I have purchased Bill Hartmans book on kindle but not read it yet. Therefore anything I write here is my take on it.

Notice I have generally referred to these as resources for the older 'lifter,' as most of the guys writing this stuff are coming from a lifting back ground and not so much the endurance background.

But do you need to train differently as you get older? Does anything need to change? And does it depend more on your training age or chronological age? Is it more to do with your training background, whether it be classic bodybuilding training, powerlifting, olympic weightlifting, endurance running 10k to 160k, or a sport like football (soccer)? And is it just a matter of getting wiser and not doing stupid stuff so much?

"Remember when you were you young, you shone like the sun"

When you're young you can pretty much get away with any stupid training regime and diet.

You can drink a gallon of milk, inhale some pre-workout, train for two hours, have a post workout KFC, go for a few beers, sleep in til 11am and repeat as necessary.

Remember those days you could spend 2-3 hours in the gym, with 30 minutes mobility, a chat, and a dedicated soleus and forearm day? No, me neither. Of course no one did any mobility work in the 1990's for a start.

And then you can do stupid stuff like deadlift maximum with no warm up because your friends are, keep running with an open wound on your foot because you want to finish a 5 day event, or run off a wall drunk in the dark, injure your knee and elbow, wake up covered in blood and don't bother seeking any medical treatment (okay, these are all things I did).

And then...

"With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older"

One day you wake up and things hurt. And the bit that hurts keeps changing, it could be your shoulder, or lower back, or neck, or forearm, or t-spine or knee (or is that just me?).

If you made it into your 40's without any injuries you are either a replicant or never did anything stupid or pushed out of your comfort zone. Well done either way.

And all those guys that were squatting maximum everyday, well they had hip replacements. Maybe there was no correlation and they were going to get them anyway. Who knows. And training like a Bulgarian weightlifter is probably okay if you are genetically gift, chemically assisted and are only doing it for a short window of time to win something.

One day you wake up and realise you are going to face the grim reaper, which means you need to do 2 things: 1) Improve your chess game 2) Not knock on heavens door with a Dad-bod.

"So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore"

Playing chess with death. Film reference for the day. The Seventh Seal. source:empire online magazine


I know quite a few guys lifting weights into their late 50's, and guys running into their 60's.

There are two interesting things I've observed, the guys still lifting in their 50's when I've talked to them never deadlifted or squatted heavy. Basically when they started in gyms in the UK there were no power racks, so they never did that type of training. And then when these things were popular they decided it was too late for them to take up that type of lifting. Coincidentally these guys don't have back or hip injuries, although they do have shoulder injuries from benching! These guys are still lifting heavier than I can on things like chest press, shoulder press, pulldowns etc.

And then you have the runners, there is some evidence that people are actually get faster in their 60's than in middle age. I know at least one runner in this age category who is still running sub 18 minute 5k and sub 35 minute 10k, on three short training sessions a week.

Of course, this is not a random sample, it is my biased sample. And it will be interesting too see how todays younger generation look in their 40's and 50's after training in the current milieu.

Its not the age, its the responsibility.

Another thing I've noticed about the guys writing these over 40 resources, it seems to be much more a factor of having children than aging.

And I know where they are coming from (I have a 2 year old son).

For example, there is a big trend at the moment about the importance of sleep and how you should be getting 8 hours a night. Any new parent is laugh manically at such a suggestion.

I used to run ultras but then realised I didn't need to run 100 miles to experience sleep deprivation, a young baby will do the same for you.

Getting woken up every 2 hours by the sound of a crying baby, then having to get up and train, your pre-workout meal now consists of a biscuit you found on the floor and a cup of tea you are drinking out a bowl because you can't find any cups. You then go to work, stick your head in a vat of caffeine, then return home, look into your partners eyes which have developed the 1000 yard stare of Dien Bien Phu veteran and start all over again. Yes, its a combination of Guantanamo Bay and Special Forces training but with more nappy changes.

Suddenly your priorities change, you need to do more time efficient sessions. You need to get back home, you are not sure if one week you will be able to train 2 or 3 or 4 times. You can't go for a 7 hour run on a Sunday, and you don't want to.

You can't always hit it hard, as you are knackered and you are not going to get that precious recovery sleep that all those sanctimonious 20 something coaches keep going on about; at this point you are so tired you can't even figure out how to fit the coloured blocks into the right holes in that toy your baby has. And you start doing yoga purely for the 10 minute relaxation at the end, where you hope to catch a quick powernap.

(Of course, you wouldn't change it for the world, and you get to carry the baby around in a rucksack, basically doing weighted vest steady state cardio wherever you go).

'The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older'

At this point let me point out there is a difference between chronological age and training age.

Some people don't start lifting weights until their 50's. I know at least 2 women who are lifting heavy weights for the first time in their 50's. This means the accumulated trauma hasn't happened yet, I know one has recently been injured from lifting heavy (as in powerlifting world record for her age heavy). Same with some guys I know who started lifting weights in their 30's. They have a golden period of high volume training, lack of any periodisation or back off weeks until one day something snaps. If you started in your teens or 20's it just snaps earlier.

Same for running, the earlier you started, the more chance you didn't start by training intelligently and you've had more time to wear yourself down and amplify any movement impairments.

But do not despair..

"Too old to rock n roll: Too young to die"

We live in a time of unprecedented training information and modalities. Look at the evolution of mobility over the last 10 years or so.

This means you have more training options than ever before.

Do you need to train differently as you get older? In short no. Unless your circumstances and injury profile dictate you should.

But its probably time to accept a few home truths.

You are probably not going to crossfit regionals
You are not stepping into the MMA octagon for a world championship
Your are not going to win UTMB
You are not going to a club on a Friday to impress anyone with your biceps
You are not playing in the premiership (and you should probably give up football if you value your ACL's and dignity)

However, this does not mean you cannot train hard, it doesn't have to be darts and golf unless that's what you like.

Having said all that here are my top tips:


  • Shorter more focused sessions.
  • If you are unsure how many times a week you can train, go total body each session. If you know you can 3 or 4 times a week, you don't have to do this.
  • Avoid too much spine compression, why are you heavy squatting, can you achieve the same in a different way?
  • Technique is paramount
  • Accept that some exercises are over for you. For example, due to an old injury I haven't done any dips for nearly 10 years. I still manage to work my triceps and chest without this exercise.
  • I like rest pause sets and descending sets to maximise time efficiency and overload with the minimum number of sets. For example, with rest pause, 2 warm up sets, then one set where you get 6-8 reps, rest 10 seconds, get 1 or 2 reps more, if you are feeling good, rest another 10 seconds and get another 1-2 reps.
  • You never need to do a 1 rep max
  • Variety is your friend - dumbbells, kettlebells, bands, yoga, bodyweight, sprints.
  • Meditate
  • Warm up
  • Mobilise, if pushed for time, pick 2 mobilisations for key areas you need to work on each session.
  • Power, stop those sarcomeres withering, keep those fast twitch fibres. Sprints, and jumps (but warm up first!, build up sets and sprint speed).
  • Strength, especially for endurance athletes do some strength work. 
  • Run up hills.
  • Probably stop drinking a gallon of milk a day.
  • Probably stop eating like a teenager on holiday in Magaluf.
  • Just keep going.
  • Feel free to ignore all of the above, you're old enough to know your body by now.
  • And if you are in your 70's enter Badwater or the Barkley Marathon, what've you got to lose?!
But most of all don't use age as an excuse, keep moving, keep learning.

(all things in quotes, songs, you can guess which ones, Springsteen, Pink Floyd, and even Jethro Tull for all the old heads).