Blog

In January, I decided to put more emphasis on low-intensity cardio. You know, for heart health and all that.

Two kids and working from home really zaps my activity levels.

The late afternoon* was the only time I could fit in a decent cardio session without taking an angle grinder to everyone else’s routine. But I was already using that time for strength training.

Obviously, I didn’t want to forfeit strength training altogether. But I had to compromise.

Instead of doing a dedicated block of strength in the afternoon, I now do five or so minutes every hour I sit in the office, which adds up to about 20-30 minutes three or four days a week.

Is it ideal? Far from it. But it’s the best workaround I could think of where I could still at least maintain my strength.

But most importantly, it leaves me a decent chunk in the afternoon for a walk**.

-J

*Well, except late in the evening. But there are just too many moving pieces at that point in the day.
**Like now when I should really leave for a walk instead of typing this.

It’s true that you probably don’t have enough time for the perfect, glistening Rolls Royce workout plan. At least if you want to follow your training routine with any consistency.

Luckily, the most practical workouts are simple, reliable and about as glamorous as Toyota.

Far from perfect and not very pretty or exciting, but they get the job done.

And unlike the Rolls Royce version, you can squeeze in a Toyota workout whether you have 5 minutes or three-quarters of an hour. Even with little sleep and stress levels pressing the back of your eyeballs.

I haven’t done a Rolls Royce workout since at least 2018. And I can’t see myself doing them any time soon. Like you, I’ve got other shit to worry about.

-J

You don’t need a trainer, guru, influencer, or pastor to dictate how you should move or live.

You don’t need a list of optimal things you should do to improve your health and fitness.

Reclaiming your energy and strength isn’t something that’s done for or to you.

You’re the expert of your life. You can listen to the input from others, but in the end, you’re the one who decides where the guardrails go.

Instead of dictating what you should or shouldn’t do, a coach will help you find the things that work within those guardrails.

-J

In the early 90s, text television was the shit. I’d wake up in the morning, hit the ‘teksti tv’ button on the Finnish remote, and key in 235.

Like many kids in Finland, I followed the NHL (the National Hockey League for all you non-ice hockey people) from when I was barely out of nappies. Keying in 235 on text television took you to the page with all the last night’s NHL scores.

From October to June, I’d wake up to that site like I was summoned to a religious sermon. Every single morning. As did all of my friends.

The methods changed over the next 30 years, but one thing stayed the same: I knew everything that was happening in the NHL. And for the last two decades, hockey’s been the only sport I follow.

Once I moved to Australia in 2007, my obsession with the NHL became more feverish. The change in time zones meant that the games were on during my daytime instead of overnight, like in Finland. With the subscription service, I could watch as much hockey as my bleeding eyes could take.

Then one day last December, I was trying to find more time to read books, write, and get in some cardio.

As I examined my time use, it was clear that keeping up with NHL took up hours each week. Watching highlights (I quickly learned that watching full games is a no-go with two young kids), keeping up with the news, rumors, whatever. It all took a lot of time.

The more I thought of it, the more my relationship with hockey started to feel like a relationship held together by our 30+ year history.

I mean, we still had the spark. But just because we’re still occasionally bowling together doesn’t mean we should redo our vows, tattoo each other’s names on our foreheads, and start a polka band.

At the same time, I didn’t want to end the relationship because being a hockey fan was a huge part of my identity.

But then again, I fucking love a good book.

And so, that same December evening, I deleted the NHL app from my phone and decided not to follow hockey for the rest of the regular season, which would go on until April.

Surprisingly, since the app was no longer on my phone, I had zero urge to keep up with hockey scores or news. I didn’t miss it.

Once the playoffs kicked in, I followed the scores on and off. But this was the first time in, well, ever, that I wasn’t that invested in what was happening, which felt weird.

Not unlike watching your ex-partner date other people, get married, and have kids. I mean, I am very happy for them. And also, thank god we went our separate ways.

What’s the point of all this?

Sometimes we spend our time doing things for reasons that we think matter.

Only when we look deeper might we find that our reasons aren’t ours anymore.

-J

Adding a workout or squeezing in a run to reclaim your energy and strength might sound like the best option right now.

After all, it’s the doing of things that makes us feel like we’re making progress toward our goal.

But your basket is already more packed than a hipster’s picnic.

Stuffing another thing into your basket will only add to your stress. It won’t do any favors for the odds of sticking with your new activities.

Often the right starting point is to look at your existing list of stuff to do. And then find a thing or two you can remove to create even a sliver of space for what matters.

-J

Last Thursday, I hurt my back. As in, sitting down felt like living through the Casino Royale torture scene. Getting in or out of bed to go to the toilet made me wish for a catheter.

I’ve had episodes of back pain, but this one wins the crown of pain. And it’s not even close.

Pain is a very personal matter for each of us, but I thought it’d be helpful to share a few things that I’ve done in the last four days to feel better. If not 100%.

Spoiler alert: so much of our pain is about the pain and injury stories we tell ourselves. I might’ve called an ambulance if this had happened five years ago. No joke.

Here’s what went down on Thursday.

I was doing some relatively light Romanian deadlifts with kettlebells and felt something in my back. Since it was just a tiny twinge, I figured it’d be ok and kept going with the set (which is the opposite of what I recommend my clients do).

In the next rep, it felt like someone rammed a rusted butter knife into my back.

It wasn’t too bad right away, but the back started to feel nasty as the afternoon wore on. Walking to get the kids from daycare was a firm no-go. I gave up after 400 meters.

The next morning wasn’t much better.

Moving like Tinman with a “nervy” pain in the back and running down the left leg at various intensities. Joy.

But I knew and know that with most of the non-trauma-induced (car crashes, falling out of a tree, getting kicked by a mule) soft tissue injuries, the pain level rarely correlates with the actual physical damage. I knew that pain is more intense when we’re feeling stressed. And I’d been feeling little stressed the last few weeks.

I also knew that a good night’s sleep would help. So I took paracetamol to numb some of the pain—something I’ve never had to do with a musculoskeletal injury. There’s no way I could’ve slept without it though.

And although I wasn’t feeling much better by the morning, the pain subsided significantly as Friday progressed.

Here’s what I’ve been doing since Friday morning to make my back feel better:

1. Staying positive and avoiding negative language when talking or thinking about my back (“my back is broken,” etc.). But let’s face it, there were times where I felt sorry for myself.

2. Moving as much as possible while keeping the pain <5 out of 10 most of the time.

Walking, Cat/camels (first by leaning against the wall and gradually making my way to the ground), shimmys, child’s pose, back extensions, tactical frogs, squats, push-ups as soon as I could get down to the ground on Friday morning. The last one being more for the mind than anything.

Saturday was significantly better than Thursday and a little better than Friday.

But I still had to be mindful to avoid the rusty butter knife in some positions.

On Sunday, I was still in pain but could do a long walk and run a short distance next to my kid while he biked.

Today I’ve been able to do modified mini-workouts throughout the day, but workouts nevertheless. I still can’t touch my toes to save my life, but I can bodyweight squat deep without pain.

Tomorrow? Cartwheels! Kidding.

Anyways.

The idea here wasn’t to show specific exercises and tactics everyone should do when dealing with back pain. Instead, I wanted to highlight the overall strategy of staying positive where possible, educating yourself about pain, moving as much as you can, and gradually increasing the pain-free range.

Oh, and a heat pad. I wanted to marry one of those on Thursday and Friday.

I hope that helps. If you want to educate yourself about pain, here’s a great free ebook from ESSA and Pain Australia worth a geez. It’s dope.

-J

To improve our health and fitness, we need to have a deep understanding of why what we’re doing now isn’t working.

Gaining this deep understanding requires shoveling dirt away until we’re left with nothing more than the root of the problem. The absolute essence of our struggle.

Digging to the roots gives us the boundaries to work with. It’s only once we know the root cause and the boundaries we have that we can decide on the strategy and tactics to improve our situation.

Until then, we’re wasting time and energy copying other people’s tactics and behaviours in hopes that they’ll work for us too.

-J

When you hurt your back, you know that it’ll come good eventually.

When you get sick and miss a workout or a week of workouts, you know it’ll barely affect your overall progress.

When you eat a healthy diet most of the time, you know that one meal, one day, or even one week isn’t going to make much of a difference.

When you go on a trip and can’t stick to your regular workout program, you know there’re multiple ways to get the same benefits.

When your brain is a bubbling hellfire of anxiety, you know that you can sit with it, and it’ll eventually pass.

The more you know about the body and the mind, the more you can take adversity in stride.

Knowing that in the long term, you’ll be just fine.

-J

It’s possible that the gym isn’t for you. Maybe it’s something about getting there, the atmosphere, or the exercises you associate with gym training.

Maybe you’ve tenaciously tried the gym in random spurts over the years. But struggle to stick with it.

You could keep trying. Hoping that the next time it’ll finally click for you.

Or, you could accept that the gym isn’t for you. It’s not the place where you do your workouts. Accepting tjis allows you to redirect your energy where it counts.

We often treat being in the gym as an essential part of our fitness routine. Whether we like it or not. But there’s nothing magical about the gym.

You pick things up. You carry things around. You put things back down.

And you can do it anywhere. You might as well do it at a place where you enjoy being.

-J

If you’ve been following me for a while, you might think that I am as much against strict diets and short-term fitness transformations as a carnivore diet fanatic is to science, common sense and the sight of a barn full of potatoes.

But it’s not quite as black and white.

I am against short-term transformations for anyone who hasn’t mastered the fundamentals of their health. Fundamentals of having a healthy relationship with food, exercise, stress, recovery, rest, and setting boundaries. As in, a healthy relationship both physically and mentally.

When all those pieces of health have been in place for at least a year or two, despite a busy life, the person has earned the right to entertain the idea of intense, short-term where-did-my-left-lung-go fitness challenges.

Without a solid foundation, the intense fitness challenges are like trying to learn how to drive a car with flat tires, a blacked-out windscreen and a shish kebab as a steering wheel.

-J