1-2-3 Sundays: Growth, Parkruns & Fear

1 Theme

Self-Experimentation

I'm addicted to growth.

I love getting that extra 1% to make me feel and perform better.

After mentioning the sauna last week, I decided to pair it up with deliberate cold exposure - cold showers.

The gym has one of these so after coming out of the sauna I jumped in several times this week.

At first, there's a shock. It's fucking cold. But after 30 seconds or so and focusing on breathing it becomes easier.

Stanford professor Andrew Huberman described the two best ways to conquer the fear of getting in. The first is simply increasing your time every session. The other is "counting walls".

When your mind tells you to get out, you break that "wall" by staying for a few seconds longer. This builds up resilience to the cold and also releases cortisol and dopamine - the feel-good hormone.

This experimentation puts you out of your comfort zone slightly to the point where you're able to learn about the limits of your body.

Without investigating your own limits you'll never find out what you're capable of.

Regardless of the outcome, there's growth. If it worked then great. If not, then you learned. You can adapt and refine the process next time around.  

2 Positive Outcomes

First Park Run

First of all big shoutout to the volunteers who turn up every Saturday to make these events possible.

Aimee asked if I wanted to try a Park Run with her. There was no expectation in regards to time - we decided to run together. It was about completing and creating the baseline from which to build.  

I was really proud of her for turning up and doing it with very little running experience.

Relative Strength Increases

One of the hardest aspects of a fat loss phase is retaining strength.

Rather than focusing on the absolute numbers, I've been turning my attention to maintaining what I was lifting before fat loss.

As your body weight decreases, lifting the same as before doesn't mean you aren't progressing - instead, your relative strength to your body weight is going up.  

As an example, an 80kg squat this week when you're 2 lbs down from when you did it last week is a gain in relative strength.

For me, my pullups and incline bench went up slightly this week as my body weight dropped.

3 Things I've Learned

Fear Is A Performance-Enhancing Drug

I'm stealing this from my coach Kristian Hill.

He dropped this bomb during the group call last Monday.

Fear is great for motivation at the beginning of a challenging journey. It's the fear of the unknown, not knowing what to expect.

There's fear of remaining stagnant with no progression. It gets you out of the comfort zone to a place of discovering where your limits lie.

It's pretty fucking powerful.

But it's a drug.

And as Uncle Ben (or Aunt May, depending what Spiderman you prefer) said:

With great power comes great responsibility

This drug is powerful.

Abusing it can have a negative impact. Motivation through fear can lead to resentment.

In small doses, it's great. It kickstarts you.

Paired with motivation through empathy it makes you unstoppable.

Second Brain

A few weeks ago I spoke about upgrading my system for capturing ideas.

Essentially, without adequate systems in place friction increases and tasks become harder.

I've started using Notion for storing all my ideas, saving studies I'm interested in and book notes.

This works as a second brain, freeing up space in my actual brain to work more efficiently.

It's like moving files from the RAM on a computer to a hard drive. Less space is used on the RAM and the computer operates faster.      

Sauna For Life

I ended up down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at the benefits of sauna.

One aspect which really stuck out the how it can impact your longevity.

Long-term use of sauna protects against cardiovascular disease

The heat exposure promotes responses which result in cardiovascular health.

One study found men using the sauna 2-3 times per week resulted in a 27% reduction in cardiovascular disease mortality compared to those who used it only once.

Another takeaway is sauna also preserves muscle mass as we age. Exposure to heat slows down muscle atrophy.  

Making sauna a part of your post-workout routine doesn't sound like a bad idea eh?

Enjoyed this? Subscribe to get notified with each newsletter.

Know someone who would enjoy this? Share with them.

Feel free to drop me a reply or a DM and start the conversation.