Blog

No, not your physical location, but the way you feel.

On most week days, when I close my laptop after a day’s work, I am a ball of anxiety, frustration, and everything in between. Just name a negative feeling, and I can find it’s home somewhere deep in my brain.

That’s rarely the reflection of the tasks I do throughout the day (unless I’ve been doing the taxes) but rather the tasks I haven’t done. Combined with all the sitting. And I know that I will carry that negativity with me if I transverse myself through that door behind me and attempt to hang out with the family. I also know from experience that it just sets a negative tone for all of us for the rest of the afternoon.

So I have to take 10 minutes.

And I know nothing that changes my state, the way I feel, in 10 minutes as effectively as movement does. I assume people who do heroin feel the same way when doing heroin. My heroin just happens to be movement. At least it’s cheaper.

So, I get up, pick up my kettlebell, and do some get-ups and swings and snatches and cleans and presses and whatnot for 10 minutes. And with every rep, I peel all this tension off me.

Until it’s all scattered on that floor. And then I walk through that door.

-J

We often see frustration as the enemy, but focusing on the negative means we’re missing something significant.

We feel frustrated when we hit a plateau, fail to meet our goals or face ginormous obstacles. These are opportunities for reflection and adaptation. They signal that it’s time to reevaluate our methods, set new targets, or simply push through that frustration.

Celebrating frustration means acknowledging your commitment to getting better. It’s not the absence of frustration that leads to success but the way you respond to those frustrations.

-J

Reps and sets only tell a small part of the story.

Building a strong body, not only for now but 15 years from now, takes so much more than x’s and o’s. It takes skills you can’t track. At least not day-to-day. Skills like:

Patience to delay gratification.

Resilience to come back after each setback.

Adaptability to do what you can with the resources you have.

Satisfaction to enjoy the process more than the end result.

Focus to ignore the noise and do things at a pace that’s right for you.

And the only way to improve these skills is to put in the reps and the sets.

-J

We’re almost two months into the new year.

At the end of last year, you made plans.

At the start of this year, you took action.

At eight weeks in, how are you tracking?

Are you still heading in the direction you want to go?

Now, heading in the right direction doesn’t mean that you’re constantly grinding and hustling onward like a bulldozer.

That almost never works. Especially when you have a dozen other responsibilities to juggle.

What matters is that you’re moving in the right direction at a pace that feels right to you.

-J

This one’s from Paul at PainScience.com, sharing examples of appalling and harmful comments healthcare professionals have made to their patients. The comment section has plenty more.

Here’s one:

“You’re all out of alignment. We’ll need to schedule ten weekly sessions to try to get things back in place…”

Or how about this one:

“my first ultrasound (at 20 weeks) with my first child, the ultrasound tech gasped, then exclaimed, “You weren’t expecting twins were you! Cuz if you were, it looks like we’ve got a disappearing twin here!””

One more:

“Surgeon gleefully announced bone on bone. Also casually told me the meniscus was “shredded”. Was pretty demoralising. In spite of being aware of the power of words, its still affecting.”

Here’s the link for more. Only click and read it if you want to feel angry about the world. No joke. I had to lie down to stop hyperventilating.

-J

Things happen. Often randomly.

We make up the reason because we don’t like open loops.

-J

In my teens and 20s, all I cared about was my looks. That’s all I trained for. Well, that and my ego. Trying to punish myself to be the strongest and fittest person in the gym (I never was).

My early 30s were about the same. Although with less ego and a kinder approach towards myself.

Sometime in my mid-30s, the goals shifted towards health and general fitness for life. Some of it had to do with becoming a parent. It has a way of changing the perspective of how we see the world and ourselves in it.

But it was only in my late 30s that I started to seriously think about training and aging. Not to chase the glory days of my youth but to train in a way that supports me today and for the next however many decades.

Now, in my 40s, one thought illustrates my training. It goes through my head at the start of every workout: “I better do get-ups today to keep the hips and upper back loose.”

Obviously, I am still thinking about the looks. But compared to my 20s, it gets about 20% of the attention instead of 100%. And that focus mostly shows in my diet, and not in the way I train.

There are so many things I wish I could tell my 20-something self. Wisdom that would’ve saved me a bunch of injuries and a whole lot of misery. But then again, there’s no way I would’ve listened to some dinosaur in his 40s.

What about? How have your training goals evolved over the decades?

-J

I was at a fitness seminar years ago, and one of the speakers asked that question.

Being a room full of fitness professionals, about 99.9% of the hands went up. The 0.1%? He was eating a taco and couldn’t raise a hand.

The speaker saw the hands go up. “You realise what you do is not normal for most people?”

The fitness industry is terrible at meeting you, the client, where you are at.

“Eat this. Lift this. Sleep like this. Cut that. Add that. Don’t do that. You have the same 24 hours as everyone else. WHY ARE YOU NOT LISTENING TO ME?!”

The fitness industry needs a paradigm shift.

It’s about cultivating a dialogue, listening, and adapting. It’s about moving from an authoritarian model to a collaborative one where your voice and experience are central to the process.

Demand that from your coach.

-J

“I don’t want to squat because it fucking hurts.”

That’s about the first thing Julie said to me when we first spoke. She’d had a few knee reconstructions and now ambled away with about zero cartilage in both knees.

She was adamant that she would never squat again. And because she found the pain so demotivating, I agreed that we wouldn’t be squatting.

Six months later, she was doing goblet squats, lunges, and single-leg squats on a box. Pain-free.

Not because I provided some magic tricks to take away her pain. But because she gradually built up her strength and confidence with her lower body. Until one day, she felt confident enough to try how a squat might feel. And it felt good.

Your body is incredibly robust and adaptable.

-J

ps. She might’ve said “hurts” instead of “fucking hurts.” But let’s not allow little details to get in the way of an inspirational story.

There’s a good chance you need to change your daily routine.

Not overhaul your whole existence. But to reshuffle parts of your schedule schedule. Cancel a thing or two to make space for 30-45 minutes a couple of times a week.

There will never be enough time for everything.

You’ll likely have to put other, less urgent priorities on the back burner.

Even if they are things you enjoy.

-J