Alexandersmap

    Category: Fitness

    • A Rich Life

      “We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.” — Cesare Pavese

      I went out for a ride yesterday, cycling the streets in this small town I’ve lived in for so many of my days. It was the first ride of the season for me—admittedly very late to be back at it again, but we get pulled in so many directions, and cycling is only convenient when we’ve got everything ready to roll (including our mind). As with any habit, we make it easy and we’re more likely to do it. We make it hard and it never happens.

      I’m a kid again on a bike, and sometimes I forget to be a kid. A quick ten miles just to blow the rust off a bit and remind myself that I can do this more frequently if I would only put aside the excuses and just go do it. The ride was a rolling reminder of how much I love to ride a bicycle, of how many hills there are in this small town, and a series of flashbacks to who I was at different moments moving through these streets. The days are all a blur, it’s truly the moments that stand out.

      Knowing this, we must aim for the memorable in our days. Moments of clarity, moments of exuberance. What in this routine day will be the thing we will most remember one day when all the rest of it fades away? Break out the highlighter! Dare to be bold, or watch it blur into the obscurity of a life cautiously lived one day at a time. Rise each new morning with insatiable curiosity, wondering, what will we remember of this day? And then being that person that does those things. That’s how to live a rich life. That’s how to make this journey a hell of a ride.

    • Grinding for the Long Term

      “Going from zero weekly exercise to just ninety minutes per week can reduce your risk of dying from all causes by 14 percent. It’s very hard to find a drug that can do that.” — Peter Attia, Outlive

      I’m sore. The kind of sore that you seek out one step or lift or twist at a time. And since I’m traveling as I write this, that means a whole lot of steps. But I’m on a climb back to a higher level of fitness—the kind that lasts a lifetime.

      We are dealt a genetic hand when we are born, and we must learn how to play that hand as best we can to mitigate the bad cards while maximizing the value of our better cards. I’m not much of a card player but I know enough to play for the long term when the cards present themselves a certain way. In poker (and in life) this is called grinding.

      There’s always an excuse for stepping off the fitness path. Yesterday’s excuse could have been deep dish pizza and a birthday toast for my daughter. Neither of those things would have changed a great day by having them. I celebrated with a salad and iced water. There’s a time for carbs and booze, and a time to stay on track. Great days happen when we focus on the joyful essential, not the superfluous extras.

      Similarly, working out every single day can suck a lot of time away from other things we could be doing. What are those things? Are they so important that we can’t carve out an hour or two out of the day to exercise? Usually not. We made a walking tour of Chicago part of our itinerary, seeing things we might not have seen otherwise while increasing our step count.

      They say that life hardens us. But life can also soften us too. We grow comfortable and complacent, and less inclined to do the work needed to be healthy, vibrant and fit. There’s a tax that comes due when we defer our fitness. Pay me now or pay me later…. Choosing to grind each day offers dividends in more energy now and a longer health span down the road. Making that road more vibrant for longer is a great investment in our time now.

    • How Clever

      “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” — Rumi

      They say that change happens slowly, but it feels more instant than that. Transformation happens slowly—deciding to change happens instantly. The rest is execution. Decide what to be and go be it.

      We get too clever for our own good. We come up with great excuses for why we won’t change and say we’ll get to work tomorrow. There is no tomorrow, friend. We must get to work now.

      How clever is that?

    • Work to Be Done

      “Allow yourself the opportunity to get uncomfortable.” — Alex Toussaint

      When we move into uncomfortable situations, we are making a choice to move away from our old identity into something decidedly new. That in and of itself is daunting. Throw in some well-meaning friends trying to gently pull you back to who you once were and it moves up to challenging. But stay the course and something switches within. It all becomes easier. Our identity has changed from someone who prefers the comfortably familiar to someone who stretches their limitations.

      Living in a constant state of getting uncomfortable requires a productive mindset. There is work to be done, we tell ourselves, because we aren’t done yet. One area of life blends with another, and another, and soon we’re finding we aren’t dwelling on excuses anymore, we’re just doing what needs to be done to make progress towards the higher standard we’ve set for ourselves. This applies to work, our health and fitness, our relationships with others, to what we read or the information we otherwise consume, and sure—to what we write. We haven’t reached personal excellence yet, but we’ve lived to fight another day. So fight for it.

      If progress is the goal, whatever the pursuit, then comfort is the enemy. We simply cannot progress when we’re holding tight to what was already comfortable for us. To climb away from that scenic vista into the unknown may make us question our sanity at times. What is sanity but behaving in a normal and rational way? Who decides what is normal or rational? The people who want things to stay just the way things have always been. What a sad, boring existence that would be. Identity is a foundation, not our final destination. Keep moving—there’s work to be done.

    • The Passage

      “Our doubts are traitors,
      and make us lose the good we oft might win,
      by fearing to attempt.”
      ― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

      Something changes in us when we resolve to do something. A switch flips somewhere within our body and soul, and our very identity has changed well before the actual work is done that we’ve decided to do to bridge the gap. The attempt becomes obvious as the logical steps between here and there. Doubt defers to a rigid focus on outcomes. Determination enters the fray.

      All of this leads us to make a passage. Like a sailboat crossing an ocean, we are on a journey ourselves, from where we were to where we’re going. This passage is fraught with a potential dangers in the form of well-meaning friends and family, work obligations, and the most insipid of dangers, comfortable habits and beliefs about who we are that must be overcome to complete the transformation. We’ll need all of that rigid focus and determination to make it through.

      The thing to remember about a passage is that it’s not one step. It’s a labyrinth, and we aren’t meant to see the other side. We’re only to take this next step. Days will fly by as they always have, but we are moving through them differently than we used to. The passage changes us in ways we don’t see until one day we realize the gap has shrunken before us. We may then honor the changes by simply taking the next step ahead.

    • Creating Outcomes

      “There is some risk involved in action, there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act.” — Harry S. Truman

      The funny thing about taking action is that it often leads to more opportunities to act. We become action-oriented, and notice opportunities to act more often than someone who is sedentary and usually looking for opportunities to rest. Ultimately we go in the direction we set our compass to, seeing what we see while creating outcomes that lead to even more outcomes.

      That term, creating outcomes, is high agency stuff. It’s an action-oriented approach to living that suits us. We all know that we’re here for a short time (memento mori). If you read this blog with any regularity you’ve certainly heard me mention that with some frequency. This is not a death-focused mindset, it’s life-focused. Awareness leads to action. We only have so much time—don’t dare waste a moment of it!

      What is an outcome but a destination separated from us by a gap we close? We see the target, determine the action necessary to reach it, and do the work to bridge our here with our potential there. Having reached an outcome, we naturally look towards the next interesting destination, and so on. This is a growth mindset, and it’s a world apart from believing we have no control over our lives. Decide what to be and go be it.

      All that said, I see even as I’m actively bridging gaps that there are other gaps yet to bridge. The only thing to do is figure out how to create those outcomes too, then get after it with urgency. For the clock is ticking and time flies (tempus fugit) and we’re deep into our one precious life, so what are we waiting for?

    • Advancing

      “Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing towards what will be.” — Khalil Gibran

      Earlier this month I began a challenge to myself. I do this every summer in some form or another, but this one felt different. More urgency to get fit again, but also a more compelling reason to stay at it. And I’ve seen progress, even as I’ve been impatient for even more. The scale indicates I’m on the right track. The three books I’m rotating through will all be completed if I stay with them. The weight circuits indicate improved strength and aerobic fitness. All signs point to improvement, and yet I want more. We humans are never satisfied, are we?

      There’s a subtle difference between enhancing and advancing. In the former we are merely tweaking our comfort level to make a slight change. It’s like turning up the volume on the television—we’re making a change, but we’re still just sitting on the couch watching television. Advancing is a different story. It’s turning off that television and walking out of an old identity towards a new one.

      Slow progress is still progress. When we get wrapped up in how big the increments are, we lose sight of the destination we’re heading towards and begin to doubt the process for getting there. The journey is always the point anyway. The arrival at a goal is certainly something to celebrate, but it also closes a chapter of becoming. We became who we set out to be. We may savor it, but them move on to the next, for life is motion.

      How do we measure motion? By progress. Where did we begin and where are we now? Where are we now and where are we going to? Who we are now is simply an image in a reel of images on the motion picture of our life. We forget sometimes that we are not a still life, but a life in motion. One moment leads to the next and the next thereafter. We may choose to make those images dance and build a life of consequence. Focus on the advance, the increments will sort themselves out.

    • The Time for Vigorous Pruning

      “I now consider exercise to be the most potent longevity ‘drug’ in our arsenal, in terms of lifespan and healthspan. The data are unambiguous: exercise not only delays actual death but also prevents both cognitive and physical decline, better than any other intervention.” ― Peter Attia, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity

      It’s that time of the season where the first wave of roses have faded and the garden requires serious dead-heading. So yesterday, despite heat, humidity and the company we were keeping at the time, I excused myself to dead-head the roses at my in-laws. The fragrance was lovely, the thorns unforgiving, and the shear abundance time-consuming, but I pressed on anyway.

      Their health doesn’t allow them to even go out to smell the roses, let alone prune them. It’s a stage of life I hope to kick down the curb as long as possible myself. Which is why I’ve chosen to change my own comfortable routine to something decidedly more challenging.

      Like those roses, we all have our peak season and then we fade. But roses will continue to bloom as long as you maintain them. A vigorous pruning results in more abundant blooms, ignore them and they put all their energy into rose hips and the show is largely over.

      We too, benefit from a vigorous pruning in the form of habit change. Eating and drinking less, and exercising and sleeping more will each change the game for us. The game is health span, or extending the time when we can be enjoying our days instead of suffering through them in a precipitous decline. Who wants their golden years tainted by nagging pain and atrophy? The time to do that is now, friend. Forget about how busy we are in our lives. We must get pruning now.

      Life has a way of rolling a roque wave over us when we wanted nothing more than a casual sail through some stage of life or other. That’s why we must develop buoyancy—our inner strength and resilience that will hold us above when life tries to drag us under. We are building the foundation today to weather the storms of tomorrow.

      This must be the season of moving more and consuming less. It’s a fascinating process of self-pruning with an eye towards a better health span in the long term, with more vibrancy and vigor in the present. We must prune away that which is no longer sustaining us, that we may thrive again and again, whatever our current season. And don’t forget to smell the roses we’ve worked so hard to maintain. That longer health span must be fully enjoyed.

    • The Incremental and the Impatient

      “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent Van Gogh

      Incremental progress is still progress. It may lack the excitement of an audacious leap forward, but there’s no denying that we’re going in the right direction, albeit slowly. Sometimes so slowly that it feels like we’ve reached a plateau. It can be a frustratingly slow transformation, when we dove into the change specifically for the change it promised to bring, and that’s why people drop resolutions almost immediately after they’ve embarked on them. We want instant gratification in this world. Like the spoiled rich kid in the Willie Wonka movie. But we know what happened to her.

      Incremental growth is the stuff of long term investment strategies and lifetime fitness. Bold leaps are inherently full of risk and reward calculations that don’t fit into important considerations like our health and financial well-being. Mothers and spouses and financial advisors tend to favor incremental, so they aren’t worries about their reckless loved ones. Being inclined towards reckless leaps now and then, I appreciate the steady focus my better half brings to the table.

      It comes down to impatience. When we are incrementally-minded, we develop the patience to let things play out until the transformation happens. When we are impatient, we change course the moment things aren’t going the way we expected them to go. Momentum dies when we’re constantly changing direction. By staying the course we learn the value of that steadiness over time. Patience is thus the virtue we were always told it was but didn’t believe until we saw it for ourselves.

      There’s value in both patience and impatience in our lives, and we ought to learn when to apply each to optimize our results. Bringing together a series of small steps completed can result in something beautiful in the end. One workout, one more day of paying ourselves first, one more page read, one more blog post, and one small brush stroke at a time accumulates into something, and that something then builds upon itself. Even when it feels like nothing is moving in the moment, momentum is established.

    • Some Palpable Pursuit

      Jack London drinking his life away while
      writing of strange and heroic men.
      Eugene O’Neil drinking himself oblivious
      while writing his dark and poetic
      works.

      now our moderns
      lecture at universities
      in tie and suit,
      the little boys soberly studious
      the little girls with glazed eyes
      looking
      up,
      the lawns so green, the books so dull,
      the life so dying of
      thirst.
      —Charles Bukowski, the replacements

      Do interesting things. There’s no other way to quench a thirst for living. Do something interesting today that you hadn’t even considered when you woke up this morning. Leap into the unknown and see where it takes you.

      I haven’t had a drink in 16 days. Not for any reason but deciding that this was a good time to try something different. To abstain from something isn’t anything more than a decision acted upon. Decide what to be and go be it. I’ll likely have a drink again someday, because that habit doesn’t rule my life, it simply spritzes it with effervescence. It turns out ice water is a decent spritz in the moment. We learn as we grow into new experiences. To challenge everything we believe is necessary is to open our minds to new possibilities.

      Honestly, I get like this sometimes, where I’ll simply stop doing something just to see how it feels to not do it anymore. And replace it with something else. A year ago I was cycling like mad trying to meet one challenge I’d set for myself. This year the goal isn’t distance but duration. To simply turn my days upside down from what they were a couple of weeks ago. The healthier character I’m becoming is a nice side benefit, if still incomplete. Naturally, there’s still work to be done. And isn’t character development a joyful pursuit?

      Changes become habits, and habits become identity. Don’t like your identity? Change your habits. Life doesn’t have to be a tedious march to the end, and it doesn’t have to be a drunken stumble awash in distraction from the inevitable. We may choose to be alive and engaged in some palpable pursuit. Mine isn’t to stop drinking, and it’s not to exercise more, though both are occurring in the same timeframe. Mine is to quench a thirst for new experiences and to see who emerges on the other side. And sure, to reflect on it in words formed of this emerging identity.