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Here’s a 22-minute podcast conversation about my 2018 book, Spandex Not Compulsory.

The podcast is also 100% AI. I uploaded my book to NotebookLM to see what would happen. 

Ended up being a solid overview of how I still approach lifelong health and fitness. But I guess it’s not surprising that I agree with it since it’s all based on my writing. 

Even if some of the tactics I wrote about in 2018 feel like a hopeful dream right now:

Batch cooking? Can’t remember the last time I batch cooked anything except muesli or cookies. 

Checking emails twice a day? Yeah no.

Masturdating? Over a year ago when I went to see Metallica.

Anyway, give it a listen if you need to recalibrate your approach to health and fitness. 

Or, just listen to it and marvel the world we live in. Wild.

Share freely!

Here’s the “podcast”.

-J

And let’s assume that instead of forcing our actions with free will, everything we do is based on our previous experiences.

Those previous experiences are based on our previous-previous experiences. And so on.

And those early previous experiences when we were born and had no previous experiences?

Those were based on the previous experiences of our parents, and our surroundings. And so on.

If everything we do is guided by what happened before, this has some implications for changing habits and behaviours.

Because the success of these changes doesn’t come down to our resilience, grit or whatever. It comes down to what came before.

And if we’re not lucky enough to have the resilience, grit or whatever from our previous experiences, at what point do we accept that maybe these changes we’re trying to achieve are not going to work?

Maybe our previous experiences mean that we’re stuck. We can’t free will our way through.

On the upside, not having free will would mean that we can be much more forgiving to ourselves (and others) when things don’t go the way we want them to.

It also reinforces the case against any cookie-cutter approach to behavioural change.

What am I missing here? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

-J

ps. This is just one of the questions I have reading Determined: Life Without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky.

It’s definitely not for me. But it’s inspirational nevertheless.

Since 1989, more than 1,000 ultramarathoners have attempted the Barkley Marathons in Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee. But only 20 have ever finished the 100-mile course, which includes about 16,500 metres of elevation – the equivalent of climbing Everest twice – within the 60-hour time limit.

And:

Paris’s success was the culmination of months of training every morning from 5am to 7.45am, before her two children were up and she started work. “The most I ran was 90 miles a week, but probably with the walking it was more like 120 or 130 miles,” she says. “In terms of practising for the ascent, I also did 11-12,000 metres some weeks from hill reps or the stair climber.

“I was also doing strength sessions as well, which were a big help,” she adds. “Most people probably don’t know, but I’ve got no anterior cruciate ligament in my left knee, because I tore it when I was 17 and never had reconstructive surgery. I know some medics who are quite surprised I can do so much off-road terrain running.”

Here’s the full article.

-J