Tag: keep training

I saw it on the internet…

I recently stumbled upon a quote that I thought was amazing, as I read it kept getting better and better and by the end, I thought to myself  “This is worthy of a blog post”

“‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless. The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.’” ~ Louis CK

Boom. That’s what we millennials like to call a #truthbomb, That’s wisdom that you can build an entire life around. Scratch that, it’s so good you could build an amazing life and then put a couple more layers of awesomeness over top for good measure.

To say that 2020 is shaping up to be a raging five-alarm dumpster could be the understatement of the century. Going out and exploring the world right now is out of the question but we can certainly do some things to expand our mind.

The golden age of communication.

568 years ago Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press and the golden age of communication was born. The big problem was way back in the 1450s about 10% of the population of Germany and England could actually read what was on that paper. Fast forward to 1820 and only 12% of the entire world’s population could read, we are doing exponential better now as in 2016 the world wide literacy rate was 86%.

Access to the written word may be closing in on 600 years old but for the majority of the worlds population, the ability to understand it isn’t much older than your great, great grandparents.

The spoken word on the other hand is as old as time, we’ve been gathering around the fire, telling stories and teaching lessons in between bites of Woolly Mammoth and that was between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago (no need to fact check, I consulted google.) 

The Second Golden age of communication.

I remember going over to my friends house in early 2005 and him going on and on about how cool this new site he found called youtube was. I asked some questions and came to the conclusion that I wasn’t nearly as impressed and probably wouldn’t use it much, boy was I wrong about that. Youtube has changed the world and how we learn, sure there’s cat video’s and this seven-second master pieced that never stops being funny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ifVx9yZbY but there’s an infinite amount of valuable lessons to be learned for FREE!!!  How often do you say this ” I wonder how I could fix… I bet there’s a youtube video on it.” I’ve never had a time where something didn’t come up.

Call to Action

Video’s and tutorials

Are you a horrible cook, looking for quick and easy recipes that feature a bunch of vegetables??  Check out this link https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/ and get after it. Sure you might eat some mediocre versions of these dishes for a while but eventually like most things you will get better if you keep working at it. Your waistline and wallet will thank you as well.

Audiobooks

I love books but I don’t have the time or patience to read them. You can sign up for an audible account for $14.00 a month or check out your local library as they often will have free audiobooks that you can check out digitally.

Here’s a few suggestions for your summer listening.

Hemingway – The old man and the sea. Donald Sutherland narrates this version and its amazing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9BNaJ48j00 Hands down this is my favorite book of all time it’s short but packs in a ton of valuable life lessons.

Steinbeck – The winter of our discontent and America and Americans are both lesser-known works from this prodigious American author but they are my two personal favorites.

Podcasts

I’m pretty sure there’s a podcast out there for every single topic of interest that you could imagine. Of all of the tools that have helped transform me into who I am today this one has had the largest impact. Here’s the best part! Besides the price of an internet connection, these are completely free.

How many times have you listened to that same old song or wasted an hour listening to talk radio while in the car? Don’t think you have enough time to listen?  According to Harvard Health Watch, the average American spends 101 minutes in a car every day. Why not use some of that time to learn, remember there is no finish line in life.

It has never been this easy to gain access to information that can truly have an impact on your life. So get out there and start taking advantage of all of the wonderful things that exist on the internet.

You are Here…


How many imaginary finish lines do you think we cross in our life? I bet its in the hundred of thousands, who knows though that number could be a gross exaggeration or a massive underestimate. Think about all the races across the school yard when you were a little kid. If having an almost 5 year old son has taught me one thing it is that everything can and probably should be a race with a finish line.

Sure the vast majority of finish lines are insignificant in our lives but what about the major ones like graduating from school, getting a job, getting married, buying a house or having kids. All of these are huge goals that can be way off in the horizon and take years and years of hard work and dedication to achieve. But what happens when we get there to the “finish Line” of that race in our life? From my experience a small amount of happiness floods in and then the reality that maybe all of that work leading up-to the finish line was just a precursor of what was really in store for us.

I’ve been kicking this idea around in my head for a while and it was really cemented while listening to one of my favorite podcasts the 3 of 7 project. https://3of7project.com/podcast/ Chadd the host and Ian Thomas recounted their adventure in an ultra race called bob big back yard. The race format is pretty simple, run 4.16667 miles within 60 minutes and if you do so you can run the next loop when it starts on the top of the hour. There is no set distance for the race it ends when only 1 person is left running. In the 2018 race the last person running logged just over 283 miles or 68 hours of running.

I don’t want to give to much away as I really think the podcast is amazing and you should totally listen to it. but with out a bit of a spoiler I cant finish this blog post so with that being said… Ian had a goal distance in mind that he wanted to achieve and with that out on the horizon although difficult at times it was a motivator to keep moving towards it. When that self imposed finish line came happiness arose but the desire to keep going waned and he threw in the towel. Chadd the ultimate motivator tells Ian ” Don’t die in the chair” we go out like warriors on the battle field. And before the next top of the hour the two are off running again for yet another loop.

Ian ran a really, really long way that day. But I wonder how far he could have ran if all the wind wasn’t let out of his sails when he crossed the “finish line” and then I thought about all the times I could have gone further but the finish line got in the way of what I was truly capable of.

THERE IS NO FINISH LINE

who says there has to be an end to any chapter in our lives. why does the learning have to stop when we graduate, why can’t the high school track star keep running and competing ? Why do we have to grow up and be adults all the time?

I know I’ve wasted time in my life thinking that I had arrived at my destination to only realize several years later that I was still standing in the same place wondering how all those people got so far in front of me. Maybe there finish line was further out in the distance or they learned before I had that there really wasn’t one. When you stand still at your destination thinking you’ve arrived you might as well be going backwards.

Call to Action.

I’m sure there’s something that you are curious to learn about right now and boy oh boy are you in luck. Access to information has never been this easy or cheap to access. I’m currently learning about organic gardening practices as well as creating a food forrests. I haven’t stepped into a classroom or paid tuition, I’ve learned a ton through the magic of youtube. Just be careful that the cute cat videos don’t suck you in to deep.

Stagger you goals. I have a goal for my trail running, its a pretty big one and its going to take a few more years to get there. In the mean time I’m going to come up with what the next step is so I’m not standing at the end of the race wondering whats next. When that happens it’s easy to take the foot off the gas and go into idle.

Go out and challenge yourself to something that you don’t think your capable of right now. Hitting the register button is often times the hardest part. Go out and train, prepare your self mentally and go out their and execute the mission. When you achieve that goal it will light a fire inside of you as you realize that there’s a lot more in the tank then you ever would have imagined.

This is really cliche but life is truly a journey and not a destination. It’s a long hard road filled with tons of work and hopefully a healthy smattering of happiness and contentment along the way. Whenever I feel like quiting I think of these words from Dr. Martin Luther King

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

Exercise is Where you find it…

A couple of weeks ago when the governor of Florida closed all the gyms in the state of Florida I thought my very rational wife was going to lose her mind. She went through all of the steps of grieving before accepting that it was going to happen by lunch the next day. The thing that sealed the deal was that her gym was going to offer classes over zoom.

So a few days later we were in the garage building a plyo box from a left over sheet of ply wood and she was headed to to gym to borrow a few pieces of equipment so that we could open up a modified Crossfit gym in garage.

The process we used to get to that final outcome is called an O.O.D.A loop. https://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/OODA-loop or observe, orient, decide and act. The goal is to work through each phase and act with the information that you have at the moment, you will more then likely have to repeat the loop a few times before you reach the best out come.

So what did we learn as a byproduct of the gyms closing? Exercise is where ever you can find it. My wife loves her cross fit gym for the exercise and the community of friends and coaches shes built along the way. I, on the other hand love running and my daily routine of push ups, pull ups and squats. I enjoy the work out but I really enjoy the quiet time by myself to contemplate life’s mysteries. Most of the ideas for this blog come when my heart rate is well above 100.

OODA LOOP TIME..

Observe – take a few minutes and think about the things that you like to do and hate to do when it comes to exercise. Do you hate running with a passion, great that’s a start. Don’t do that one. Love gardening, swimming or golfing, awesome lets start there.

Orient – Now that we’ve observed the things that we like we need to orient them in how we can turn them into functional exercise. Lets use golf as our example in this one. Golf can be a great workout if you avoid the cart, hot dogs and cold beers. Think about it if you walk and carry your bag your going for at least a 3 mile hike with 20 lbs on your back. That sounds a lot like exercise to me while simultaneously having fun.

Decide – Now that we’ve observed and oriented our selves its pretty easy to decide that something we like could be turned into exercise. We still have a few decisions to make before we move onto taking action. Sticking with the golf theme here’s a few things to consider. Will the course let me walk, how often can I play golf and can I even walk 18 holes right now.

one of my good friends Peter https://www.instagram.com/szunyoghpeter/ (give him a follow for some drool worthy food ideas) shared with me something he read that was so simple and profound a couple of days ago that I had to share it with you. It was ” you can’t go from 0-100 fast but you can go from 0-10. Then once you are at 10 then go to 20 and so on, And enjoy the journey. Moral of the story set a reasonable goal and when that becomes easy create a new more challenging goal.

Act – The first three steps are mental exercises but the fourth step action is where the rubber meets the road. lets get out a pen and some paper and put down in writing how many times a week your are going to exercise. Once again set a realistic goal and hold yourself accountable to it.

If your looking for some motivation on when to start maybe the last post about a tree will help you decide that right now is a pretty darn good time.

https://subjects2change.food.blog/2020/04/05/when-how-about-right-now/

Here are some ideas on where you might find some exercise..

Walking the neighborhood, looking for a little more of a challenge add a ruck from http://www.goruck.com or borrow your kids back pack (they aren’t using it anyways) and throw whats ever heavy in there and head out.

pull ups, push ups, crunches, burpees – all of the work with no added equipment. https://greatist.com/fitness/50-bodyweight-exercises-you-can-do-anywhere

yoga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m756Gz8de4M

Resistance band – looking to make things a little more difficult. Here’s a complete gym for less then $20.00 https://www.amazon.com/resistance-bands/s?k=resistance+bands

BEFORE STARTING ANY EXERCISE PROGRAM PLEASE CONSULT WITH YOUR PHYSICIAN!!!!!