The other night I lay in bed, mind racing. My streak of burpees every day was in jeopardy. A busy day, missed opportunities along the way, and to be more honest, procrastination had delayed me until now, 11 PM, a couple of adult beverages into the evening and ready for sleep. Except there was no sleeping with the thought of breaking the streak here. Look, I know it’ll happen eventually, but not this way. Not because of a lazy mind. So I got up, did a dozen burpees to meet the minimum and got back in bed, heart still racing, and slept like a baby. Another link in the chain.
Category: Exercise
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Falmouth Road Race
The race started at one bar and ran to another bar seven miles away. It’s started in 1972 with less than 100 runners and has grown massively popular, with a lottery to get in. The bars have changed, but they’re still there. I used to visit the Captain Kidd before it changed, but never got to the Brothers Four before it became British Beer Works; a place I’ve been known to frequent when down here.
For the fifth year in a row I drove runners to the Lawrence School in Falmouth to catch the bus to Woods Hole for the start. I’ve experimented with staying in Falmouth and going to a local diner, but three hours is a lot of time to kill and this time I end up coming back instead. Today I came back to Pocasset for breakfast with my son before returning to watch the race. Each year I stand near the Falmouth Heights Motor Lodge, which offers both an excellent view of the runners and a quick walk to the finish line where you can see your favorites again as they cross the finish line.
This year was hazy, hot and humid. The crowd supporting the runners ebbed and flowed in enthusiasm (try clapping for an hour straight), spiking for larger clusters of runners, wheelchair competitors, children, and cheerleader runners (the runners who raise their arms and prompt the crowd, igniting roars). I tracked my favorite runners on the app, and helped others to my left and right find their favorites on the course. What did we do before apps? We waited and wondered, that’s what we did.
Runners train all year for a race like Falmouth. Spectators don’t, but maybe we should. Spectaculars shuttle those runners to the buses, fight the crowds for a glimpse of their favorites, then try to find them in the sea of humanity at the finish to shuttle them home. There’s no glamour in being a spectator, but it has its rewards. For me it was the swim after we returned. Hours of madness to earn a ten minute swim in Buzzards Bay. But it works for me.
So another Falmouth is in the books. It’s become quite a family tradition, as it is for so many others. I’m not a runner, but if I were going to be this would be the race. Seven scenic miles, throngs of cheering spectators, elite runners mixed with the couple next door. Yeah, this is the race I’d run, if I ran. Maybe next year.
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Felling the Tree
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to be.” – James Clear
This morning the snooze alarm went off well before I was prepared to get up. I don’t use the snooze button mind you; don’t believe in it. You’re either sleeping or you’re getting up. But my wife uses the snooze button often as part of her wake-up routine. Thankfully most days I’m up well before her alarm would go off. Today was an exception. Feeling a bit worn out I was going to sleep in, until the second snooze convinced me it wasn’t possible.
This morning I operated in slow motion. Foggy and some aches and pains. I slowly dressed to work out, walked downstairs and drank a pint of water. The internal dialogue trending towards bagging the morning workout and doing it later in the day. I’ve heard this song before and point my feet towards the basement door, down thirteen steps and onto the erg for a row. I row 500 meters to warm up and assess my overall condition. My assessment isn’t good, but I stand after 500 meters and warm up the shoulders. More aches… but I ignore them and drop down for the burpees, slower than usual but complete, row another piece and call it a workout. I’ve done the bare minimum, cast my vote and I’m back upstairs. I hear the snooze going off upstairs and look at the clock. 60 minutes of snooze buttoning. Yikes.
On to reading stoicism, a bit of an article on Ben Franklin in London, and a bit of writing this before my wife is downstairs and off for her commute. Habits carried the morning for me even as the mind rebelled. The James Clear quote above stays with me more than anything else in his excellent book. Simple, memorable wisdom in a bite-sized chunk. I wish I’d written that. Instead I write other words, casting votes for the type of person I wish to be. I’m closing in on 100,000 words written in this blog, and a few thousand burpees. I need to move beyond the bare minimum workout, which means changing other habits later in the day. Win the morning, lose the evening and it’s a wash. Life is too short for a wash. With only 142 days left in 2019 there’s so much to do still. Why settle for the bare minimum?
I joined a group challenge with co-workers. We all travel, and we all struggle with the balance of exercise versus caloric intake that the job seems to demand. We’ve all agreed to lose ten pounds by the time we reach a trade show in Chicago next month or pay $20 bucks and hear about it from those who were successful. Nothing focuses the mind like peer pressure, so I’m all in on this challenge. But I noticed I gave myself a pass last week (after all I had five weeks to complete the challenge). I recognized this trend – it reminded me of pulling all nighters to complete papers in college. Wait until the last minute, then put yourself through hell to reach a goal. You won’t fell the tree with one swing of the axe… I like the more intelligent approach of consistent, daily action and the compound effect, and so an incremental increase in daily workload to reach the goal is in order. Keeping it going for the rest of the 142 days offers a head start on 2020, a nice round number with some big moments scheduled.
I’ve always been intrigued with the concept of accelerating through the curve. In racing that means slowing down in the first half of the apex and accelerating in the second half. Using momentum to your advantage. In life momentum starts with casting consistent, daily votes. That applies in your career, with exercise and weight loss, and writing. The lack of momentum also applies in each of these areas, so why build anchors when you can build kites? Or to return to that zen philosophy, you need to chop for a long time to fell the tree, you can’t do it with one swing.
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Raising the Average
“Perfection is the enemy of action.” – Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic
Somehow I haven’t found the time to walk five miles every day this week. Busy with stuff. Like finding excuses to not get some exercise. But somehow I’ve managed to knock off a dozen burpees every day. Granted, it’s a small token of daily fitness, but I haven’t broken the streak yet. I’ve established a cadence with burpees. It’s a form of daily ritual, a small gesture towards fitness. It won’t close the gap on its own but it gives me some measure of achievement.
Seth Godin mentioned in an interview that he writes multiple blog posts every day, essentially building a library of possibilities to post. I have no such library. Instead I write as inspiration strikes, usually in the morning but sometimes late in the day. But I post daily to keep the streak alive, typos and all. I’m not writing a masterpiece, though I surely try. The cadence is what I’m focused on. Hopefully the content meets expectations on occasion.
Every morning this week I’ve gotten up for the sunrise, alone to catch the sun break the horizon. There’s a feeling of hope for this new day, as there was yesterday and hopefully tomorrow. I haven’t had a perfect day yet this week, but I’ve had good days nonetheless. Perfect days are evasive creatures; I’ll take great days or even average days. Average is still pretty good when you look at how dark the world can be. I woke up today (bonus!), saw a sunrise, sipped some coffee and read a bit of meaningful prose. I’ll take that kind of start any day. Chasing perfection leads you down a path of never good enough, which leads to the darkness. I choose the light, errors and all.
There’s a great article about Dalilah Muhammad’s world record 400 meter hurdle run in Sports Illustrated this week. She ran an imperfect race, but she didn’t need perfection to get the WR because she’d worked so hard to be at a level of performance where an average race was still far ahead of the perfect race for someone else was. There’s a lesson there for all of us. We can’t reach perfection but by continually raising the bar in our own lives we can reach levels of greatness in our pursuits. Steady improvement over time moves us closer. That seems healthier than never good enough.
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Diminishing Returns vs. Compound Interest
Sunrises don’t suffer from the law of diminishing returns the way sunrise pictures do. Getting up for the sunrise in the summer means getting up early, and you’re either in or you aren’t. Yesterday morning I lingered in bed a few minutes too long and missed the sun breaking the horizon. This morning I made a point of catching that moment and still missed it by five minutes. But I managed to witness a decent show nonetheless.
The thing about sunrises is that once you’re up and experiencing it you recognize it was worth the effort. The thing about sunrise pictures is that they become too much of a good thing already! Too many sunrise pictures on social media and you experience the law of diminishing returns. People like the first, but by the third day in a row of posting that sunrise (or sunset) they’ve had just about enough of you. Best to practice a bit of moderation already. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all.
The first cup of coffee offers a thrill you don’t get on the second cup. Wrapping your hands around a hot mug of coffee and taking that first sip is right up there with that sunrise for sensory thrills. The last sip in that mug is just trying to capture the last of the fading heat before the dreaded lukewarm blahness takes over. You have the second cup to recapture that thrill but alas it’s not the same (but so worth it anyway). By the third cup the magic is completely gone, you’re just in maintenance mode. If you have another you start questioning your choices in life. Such is the nature of diminishing returns.
The nature of addiction is similar to that coffee experience; always searching for that thrill, increasing the dose, continuing past the point where you know you should stop. I’m simplifying it and have seen too many people struggle with addiction to treat the topic cavalierly, but I think about it because I’m challenged on it. People toss the word addiction around lightly. I’m not addicted to coffee, but I dance on the edge with it. So too with other things. I’ve danced with the topic of how much is healthy and how much is too much? on many habits; alcohol, coffee, Words With Friends, social media… blogging.
My wife runs almost every day, and has since well before I met her more than a quarter century ago. She’s a better person after a run when she hasn’t run in a few days. As with coffee so too with exercise: Too much of a good thing offers diminishing returns at best and injury to self at worst. I’ve seen her go beyond her comfort level in training for stretch goals and become injured. 5K to half marathon is her natural range and she thrives in it. Her habit loop is generally very positive and has given her a lifetime of good health and energy in return.
Self-awareness helps you develop good habits, and so do the people you surround yourself with. If you’re truly the average of the five people you associate with the most, then surely having those five be purpose-driven, physically active, supportive friends is better than the five being aimless, hard-living and dismissive acquaintances would be. Coming back to diminishing returns, those five will reinforce that first, second and third act of a habit. Do one more rep versus have another drink. Habits become more about reinforcing identity and less about the result of an individual act. The return over time builds on itself. The return on moderation, consistent exercise, getting proper sleep and reinforcing good habits with a network of positive influences in your life is the opposite of diminishing returns, it’s compound interest.
A lifetime of getting up early and seeing the sunrise has generally benefited me more than staying up late watching television or closing out the bar would have been. There’s a place for those things too, but I’ve found the benefits of staying up late offers diminishing returns as I get older while getting up and getting the heart rate up, reading a bit and writing has given me compound interest. And after all, are we riding the wave to the beach or sliding sideways to the curve? The end might be the same but the journey should be more interesting along the way.
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Progress Whispers
Scales don’t lie, and this week I added a couple of travel pounds. Sales meetings involve unnatural portion sizes repeated often, with snacks in between. And so the pants were a bit more snug than when I arrived. That seemed to be the consensus as all 90% of us immediately agreed to lose 10 pounds by a trade show in September. Peer pressure multiplied by $20 each generally does the trick.
“Progress…. is quiet. It whispers. Perfectionism screams failures and hides progress.” – Jon Acuff
Some words jolt you awake and help you see things a bit more clearly. Progress whispers resonated for me this morning. Progress towards our objectives is often painfully slow, and we find ourselves growing frustrated by the level of progress we might be making. Acuff makes another point in highlighting perfectionism as the antagonist to progress, undermining it with its relentless chirping.
Steve Pressfield describes this as “The Resistance“, Seth Godin calls it our “Lizard Brain“. It’s the inner voice that tells you it’s not good enough and not yet. Godin’s advice is to start pulling the thread anyway, to learn to dance with The Resistance. To ship your work, even if it’s not perfect. The concept of shipping a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is common in nimble businesses today, but harder to dance with when it comes to writing your first novel or starting a business.
Sales is a numbers game, and so is losing weight, writing a novel (or blog) or accomplishing any worthwhile objective. Progress whispers, and you need to break it down into the smallest increments to track it just to see any meaningful forward momentum. The 12 burpees I do every morning aren’t all that much, but they add up to 4380 in a year. I’ve noticed the change in my body even from this small amount, done repeatedly and consistently over time. So it is with sales calls, writing daily, and other accretive activity.
Losing weight is tougher as you get older. You may say it’s because our metabolism slows down. I’d certainly say that too. But then I look at the guy I went to college with who rides his bike every day and hikes the rest of the time. His high activity level has bought him washboard abs, without sacrificing career or family. Another friend who embraced CrossFit shortly before turning 50 is now in better shape than when he was 25. No, “metabolism” is “Lizard Brain” in disguise.
Activity over time equals identity. Athletic, writer, Rainmaker, parent, spouse and trusted friend are all identities I try to embrace. I’m a little better at a few than others but hope to make progress with each. My progress may be a faint whisper but it’s progress nonetheless. Best for me to listen for it more. Throwing $20 dollars and the threat of peer ridicule to the mix amplifies the goal a bit too.
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Hit the Minimum and Check the Box
I ran into trouble last year when I increased the number of burpees I was doing to 50 per day. As the reps increased I started using my upper body strength to make up for core weakness. This poor form led to injury, which led to me not doing burpees for a couple of months. Not what I was hoping for.
This year I started doing burpees again, but with a focus on technique. I also kept my total to 10 max for a few months. Embarrassingly low number of burpees, but the long view is to keep doing them every day for life and not repeat the issues I had last fall. But even at 10 per day I started getting shoulder pain again. I made a point of looking straight ahead at the wall in front of me so I wasn’t using my shoulders to bear the weight, and that helped. I started doing shoulder warm-up exercises to get the blood flowing, and that helped too. But that familiar shoulder pain was creeping back in anyway.
Two weeks ago I made a minor adjustment to the push-up part of the burpee; pointing my fingers towards each other and forming a diamond shape. This angled my elbows outward and combined with the rest of my focus on good form relieved the stress on my shoulders. Will this hold up over time as the solution? We’ll see, but that minor tweak in form has been a huge relief in doing burpees. I’ve increased the number of reps slightly and will see how it goes. I’d like to get back to 50 per day if possible, as there’s no better travel exercise than burpees.
Good form is essential in burpees, as it is in everything that we do where long term results are the objective. Burpees are portable – I’ve done them on the lawn on the Cape and in hotel rooms and gyms around the world. That means that I’ve done burpees at sea level and 15 stories up in a Manhattan hotel. My goal in hotel rooms is stealth – I don’t want to be the guy shaking the entire floor while I do these things. I land softly, usually barefoot in a hotel room and wearing running shoes everywhere else. Focusing on a soft landing offers another benefit (aside from being a good neighbor) in that it keeps my knees from absorbing unnecessary shock.
I figure my burpee ninja exercises have increased my overall strength, nullified some bad travel food and prompted me to make better nutritional choices along the way. And one good thing leads to another. I don’t just do burpees, but they’re the gateway to other exercise that I do based on where I am. Walking, climbing stairs, rowing, swimming…. whatever. But always with burpees. Hit the minimum and check the box. Good form and good habits offer sustainability and a foundation on which to build something bigger. And that’s why I’m focus on getting it right from the beginning.
