Tag Archives: exercise

Wear and tear

I have shoes that I only use in my basement to go on my treadmill and stationary bike. The shoes have red soles. Yesterday while stretching I looked down at my treadmill and I saw two red lines on the track belt where my feet land when running.

They are a bit hard to see in the photo despite playing with the colour contrast, but they are quite visible when I look for them on the belt. I don’t know why, but it didn’t occur to me that I would be wearing down the treads on my shoes just running on a treadmill. Thinking about it now, it does make sense. I’ve been using these same shoes for five and a half years… of course they would have some wear and tear as I walk and run on a treadmill 4-6 times a week.

But had my soles not been red, leaving their marks on my treadmill, I probably would have ignorantly ran in the same shoes for another 3-5 years without replacing them. It’s funny how we take objects for granted, expecting them to work, not thinking about repairing or replacing them until they just don’t work anymore.

You aren’t likely to replace a kettle or toaster until it stops working. Your favourite jeans remain your favourite until they tear. That 5,000 hour light bulb was not something you ever thought would need replacing until it just doesn’t turn on.

While our bodies age and show signs of wear and tear, we don’t always think about other things that do until a repair or replacement are needed. But these worn down shoes can actually affect my stride and cause me issues before I realize they need to be replaced. They can affect my personal wear and tear.

What’s something you just expect to work until suddenly it doesn’t anymore?

What are you showing up for?

I wrote this back in April 2022:

We live in a society now where there is so much pressure to do well; to be your best; to shine. It’s not easy. But sometimes the message doesn’t have to be ‘you are awesome’, ‘you have so much potential’, or ‘push yourself’. Sometimes the message of ‘just show up’ is all we need to hear.

  • Don’t plan an hour workout, just show up at the gym.
  • Don’t worry about how much you have to do, just start.
  • Don’t create a huge ‘to do’ list, pick 2-3 things you know you can get done and check those off… even if showing up is one of those things!

It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than thinking your way into a new way of acting. ~Richard Pascale

Just show up!

In a coffee shop with a friend today we were discussing the value of ‘Just showing up‘, and he asked the very rich question, “What are you showing up for?”

Two things come to mind and they are related:

  • For the habit; and
  • For the accomplishment.

When your attitude is ‘just show up’ you often end up doing more than you expect. A perfect example is exercise. “I don’t feel like working out today” is not showing up! But “I don’t feel like working out today so I’ll just walk on the treadmill for 10 minutes…” This is ‘just showing up’! And if you only do 10 minutes, that’s great! You weren’t feeling up to doing anything and you accomplished a short workout. Fantastic!

But what also might happen is you could finish that 10 minutes and add another 10 minutes because now you’re feeling pretty good about it. You could decide you’re just going to do a walk and then you end up doing a run. You could finish the 10 minutes and then do 15 or 20 minutes of stretching that you wouldn’t have done had you not got on the treadmill in the first place.

So instead of not showing up and skipping the workout you have both maintained the habit and you’ve also accomplished something to feel good about.

What are you showing up for? Consistency: Habit reinforced; Accomplishment achieved.

Fit for life

I listen to a lot of podcasts about healthy living. It’s amazing how some key topics keep coming up again and again. it’s like there comes a point where collective knowledge just compounds and evidence piles up to support some key ideas. Here are a few things that I have been hearing repeatedly, which all suggest ways to live a long and healthy life. (Not in any order of priority.)

1. Eat more protein. We don’t tend to eat enough, and we tend to eat less as we grow older, but protein is important for both muscle and brain health.

2. Do cardiovascular exercise regularly. At least 5 days a week for the rest of your life. Don’t like to run? Then don’t run! Find something you like to do, spend a minimum of 20 minutes doing it. It doesn’t matter if you like intense cardio, or if you prefer low intensity, what matters is staying active and getting your heart rate up. It’s also important for burning calories, especially if you like food a bit too much.

3. At least once a week get your heart rate up to about 80% of your maximum. This can be done in bursts, like sprinting for 2-3 minutes then slowing down for 2-3 minutes and repeating a few times, or just pushing yourself with a consistently faster pace, or maybe walking on an incline on a treadmill. One thing that really matters for healthy longevity is your maximum VO2 (the max amount of oxygen your body can absorb during exercise). This is maintained and improved primarily by pushing your body past this 80% mark.

4. Do some sort of strength training 2-3 times a week. Constantly remind yourself body that it is not yet in a period of decline. Remind your body that it is a muscle builder. Do this by pushing at least one muscle group completely to fatigue.

5. Take creatine and vitamin D. I’m not a doctor, and you should seek medical advice for supplements, but these are two supplements I feel safe to recommend because they both have tremendous upside and are extensively researched with no downside unless you are an idiot and take extreme doses. Creatine really helps with muscle soreness and seems to have many other upsides too, including for menopausal women. This is not the ‘bodybuilding guy’s supplement’ people think it is, but one everyone can benefit from. Vitamin D is both a vitamin and a hormone used by your immune system. And unless you live in a tropical climate, 90+ percent of the population is low in vitamin D, or at the very most not at the highest levels recommended by health experts.

6. Reduce sugar intake. Our bodies crave sugar. An interesting thing that I heard recently is that this might be something ingrained in us from our monkey heritage. Fruit goes bad, and so when fruit ripens, it’s important to get a lot of it before the fruit rots. Therefore when our ancient ancestors had access to sugars, our bodies made sure to crave more while the supply lasted. Whether that’s true or not, we currently have convenient and continuous access to too much sugar and our cravings for it are unhealthy. I’ll leave you with a simple public service announcement: processed sugars are food for cancer.

7. Stretching and balance are important. It’s not enough to do the same exercise 5 days a week and not work on your overall flexibility and balance. Falls are more common as you get older, and stiff joints don’t help. Breaking a hip vastly shortens life expectancy. Keep nimble, and do things that challenge both flexibility and balance.

8. Self image is important. If you see yourself as someone who exercises regularly, you don’t have to work to get a workout in. To build a habit of good habits, create identity based habits. I am a person who works out regularly. I stretch as part of my routine. I make healthy eating choices. I enjoy doing things that keep me young.

9. Meditate. Find time for gratitude and awareness. Find time to focus on your breathing.

10. This one hasn’t been in on the health podcasts, but it’s a great place to end: Seek laughter. Find joy. Spend quality time with friends and family. Explore new ideas, and keep learning. If you are not finding ways to appreciate the life you have, you aren’t adding value to the life you are trying to extend.

The power of protein

I’ve listened to a few people like Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who are both looking at the recommended daily allowance of protein (for healthy people) and questioning it. In this video they discuss, “The longevity benefits of proper protein intake and strength training.

I already start my mornings with a protein shake, but now I’m looking at ways to increase my protein even more. There are risks around eating things like too much red meat, and after watching ‘The Game Changers‘ on Netflix, I could see myself moving to a vegetarian diet at some point (not too soon, I just love animal meat too much).

But for now I’ll blend my intake of protein between meat and vegetables… and I’ll increase how much of it is part of my diet. I remember when I did 6 weeks of the Keto diet. My body loved it, but my social life didn’t. It’s too restrictive, but I do recall just how good I felt when I was consuming a lot more protein than I do now.

I also loved the book, ‘Younger Next year‘, and I’ve shared it and suggested it to more people than any other book in the last few years. The reality is that I may be 56, but I’m not done building muscle. I’m on a path where at least 5 days a week I will work a minimum of one muscle group to fatigue and remind my body that it’s not going down hill and degenerating. Instead, I’m giving my body the message that it is still young and growing. And what I also need to do is give it enough protein to keep my body healthy… and that’s more protein than I currently eat.

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*I am not a doctor and I don’t play one on the internet.
This is my plan and please do your own research and
consult your own doctor about diet changes…
especially if you are not already healthy! 

The right tool for the job

Last weekend’s Coquitlam Crunch walk was cold. We were the only ones in the parking lot at 8:30am.

We walked about 1/3 the way up then we put on our grip-on cleats, and the cold air was a lot more difficult for me to tackle compared to the actual walking conditions. Still, we usually do the walk in 55 to 56 minutes and it took us 1 hour. A four minute difference.

Today was another story. It started the same with just us in the parking lot, but the lot was very slushy and slippery and so Dave and I put our over-shoe cleats on right away.

Walking conditions this time were much harder to tackle. One thing that added to the challenge was that we had to stop at least 10 times for Dave to adjust his cleats, which kept slipping off of his shoes. I don’t think Strava counted all the adjustment stops because when I stopped my timer it said 1 hour and 14 minutes, but it saved the time as 1 hour and 11 minutes.

That’s a significantly slower time due to the slippery, slushy conditions. We don’t mind, it wasn’t a race, and we love the opportunity to be together, get some exercise, and also feel the accomplishment of ‘just doing it’ even when conditions are less than favourable. But one thing that was quite clear was that my cleats provided a much better experience than Dave’s. In essence, my cleats were a tool that I used, but didn’t have to think about, didn’t have to manage. I put them on at the start, they did their job, and I took them off at the end. Dave’s cleats needed his attention. They took away from the flow of the experience… they interrupted our walk.

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a big deal, it didn’t ruin or walk or anything like that, they simply required our attention. On the way down Dave suggested that we think about a metaphor for the experience and the best one we came up with was, “Sometimes it’s worth getting a great tool instead of accepting and tolerating the use of a good tool.”

The cleats I own were just $21 on Amazon, and a few dollars more than the ones Dave has. The cost difference isn’t much, but the experience is so much better. Unfortunately after our walk last week, I forgot to share the link with Dave until yesterday, so he’ll get his by Monday and be ready for next week, but they didn’t come in time for today’s walk.

It’s a good lesson to think about though. Sometimes we just use a tool because it’s the one we have, the one we’ve always used, or the one that is easy to access, rather than seeking the best tool for the job. Sometimes it’s worth the time and research, and/or the extra cost, to get a tool that does the job extremely well… and reduce the challenges of using a less than ideal tool.

In the grand scheme of things, we’ll probably only need these cleats 1-3 more times this entire year, and if Dave stuck with his, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But there are things in our lives that we readily tolerate that could become ‘invisible’ and require less of our time, energy, focus, and attention… working seamlessly because we have found the right tool for the job.

Staying consistent

There have been a lot of reasons why my fitness routine has been challenging this year. It seem that I haven’t had a full month where there has been anything routine about my daily routine. I was just back in Toronto for my dad’s memorial and in 8 days I slept in 5 different places. I also ended the trip with a cold and spent the weekend recovering. I’m still not 100%, but I’m not coughing and I’ll wear a mask and get back to work this morning.

That said, I slept in a bit and I’m writing this as I pedal on my stationary bike at about 80% of my normal speed. The way I feel, I don’t think I’d go any faster if I wasn’t tapping these words into my phone. Just 3 days ago I was using speech-to-text to do my writing on an elliptical… This is not a normal thing to try and simultaneously hit two of my daily goals at once, but I’m making it work at a time when doing otherwise would make things harder for me.

It would be easy to skip something. It would take no effort on a day like this to give myself a pass. But I already did that Saturday and Sunday when I felt like crap. I haven’t skipped 3 days of exercise in over 3 years, and I’m not going to start now. So I’m muscling through, sweating far more than usual, while my output is lower than usual. But here is the point I didn’t know this post would be about that I realize now: It’s the days you just show up and totally don’t want to that matter the most.

Consistency isn’t about your regular routine. Your regular routine is a habit, it’s hard to make but once you’ve made it the effort is actually quite low. Consistency is getting you butt in gear and active, doing what needs to be done, when you really don’t want to. When you really aren’t up to it or in the mood or think you have time for it. Or when your routine gets disrupted and you have to go out of your way to follow through. Like being on an elliptical at a hotel at 9:30pm when my alarm is set for 3am, or sweating buckets on my stationary bike at the tail end of a cold, and simultaneously writing these words. This is harder than my normal workout. This is the grunt work. This is what it takes to be consistent.

We aren’t demonstrating consistency when everything is going smoothly, we have to demonstrate it when there is a disruption and and we still follow through.

The hard work of being consistent comes from actively doing what needs to be done when there is nothing consistent happening around you.

I’m going to make that into a poster and put it on my home gym wall.

Family, fun, and fitness

I am in a tiny hotel gym near the Toronto airport, dictating this while on an elliptical. It’s 9:30 PM and we head home to Vancouver tomorrow morning just after 6 AM. It has been a whirlwind week for us. Leaving our home 2:30 in the morning last week Friday to come here for a memorial celebration of the passing of my dad.

We spent a wonderful few days up at BlueMountain, near Collingwood, with my mom, her four kids, and seven of eight grandkids. Unfortunately, the eighth grandkid was hit with Covid and didn’t recover in time to join us. Still, it was so wonderful to have our family together for the first time in over a decade with all 4 kids and that many grandkids m being present. My dad would have loved it.

My wife, kids, and mom spent the last couple nights in downtown Toronto, went shoe shopping for my mom, visited the Aquarium, and saw a musical, ‘In Dreams’. The play features Roy Orbison music and my mom loved it. We all did. I was worried when it started with a side story of a woman losing her husband, but that wasn’t the focus of the show and didn’t ruin the mood despite the recency of my fathers passing.

Today we went back to my mom’s place, hung out and ordered Caribbean style Doubles from a roti shop. I really wish I could find some good West Indian takeout in Coquitlam, and since I can’t, I always make sure I get some when in Toronto.

I probably should be getting to bed right now with a 3:30 AM wake up call, but I hadn’t had any exercise other than walking at my moms pace for three days now, and I’m not sure what I’ll feel like doing tomorrow after a long day of travel. So, I am using speech to text and panting slightly, unsure of how much editing I will need to do when I get off this machine.

I remember hearing that by the time you’re 18 you have spent roughly 95% of the total time you’ll ever spend with your parents. Losing my dad has really made me put this statistic into perspective. I think about my daughters at 21 and 23, and I’m actually grateful that one still lives with us, and I already see how hard it is to plan to get together with the older one who lives an hours drive and an hour and a half ferry ride away from us.

I’m actually thankful for covid in that it was the reason my siblings and mom started a group chat and that has increased my communication with my mom and sisters. Seeing my sisters’ now grown up kids has been wonderful too, and I really question where the time has gone. It occurred to me that my oldest nephew is older than I was when I had my first kid. That seems so hard to grasp. I am now the generation that I think my parents should be. Looking at old photographs, I find pictures of my parents as adults when they were younger than I am now, and yet in my mind I’m still just a kid… Their kid.

Cardio is done, I’ve edited my voice-to-text writing above and it’s time to put on Enya and do my stretches. I’ll keep thinking and reflecting on my time with family, and then I’ll crank the music and get a little bit of strength exercise in. I like doing a variety of exercises at hotels, using machines I don’t get to use in my simple home gym.

Tomorrow, I travel home then start to worry about catching up at work. It’s going to be a bit painful, but I’m glad to have had this time, and it know how much it meant to my mom… and to me!

Not just lifespan, healthspan

Dr. Peter Attia is an expert in longevity and he talks about healthspan rather than just lifespan. Last summer I played water polo with a 73 year old, and I’ve met people a decade younger than him that struggle walking up a flight of stairs. It’s one thing to get old and yet another to live healthy for longer.

Have a listen to this podcast with Dr. Attia. If you aren’t interested in listening, here are two things to do for the rest of your life*:

1. Do cardio at least 3 times a week and one of those times get your heart rate up above 80% of your max for your age/health.

2. Do weight training 2-3 times a week and try to work at least one muscle to fatigue (hypertrophy).

Remind your body that you are young and you won’t just increase your lifespan, you’ll increase your healthspan.

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*I’m not a doctor and don’t play one on the internet. If you aren’t already healthy, please don’t start an exercise program without consulting health experts.

Maintenance mode

I’ve been struggling with an upper back injury that has involved shooting pains down my shoulder and neck pain and stiffness for over a month now. It’s frustrating. Regular massage and physiotherapy help but so has pain medication. I try to avoid taking painkillers (with chronic back issues there is almost always a reason to take something, so I only do so when the pain is restrictive and unrelenting), but I’ve had no choice the last few weeks.

This has made my fitness routine hard to follow. But I can still get on an exercise bicycle and not hurt my back. I can walk on a treadmill, and my hand movements help loosen my back. Running is out of the question. Still, I can also do leg workouts that don’t involve weights. And of course I can stretch… and need to be stretching.

Fitness isn’t just about constant improvement, it’s also about going into maintenance mode and doing *something* to take care of your body. Fifteen years ago my back would crash and it would takes months to recover. Now, this issue I’m dealing with is the worst I’ve dealt with in years. I know that a focus on fitness is what has reduced my down time, my days feeling hurt enough that pains and discomfort are constantly on my mind. However, the lack of these experiences over the last few years amplifies just how much this bothers me right now.

Yet while the pain is bothersome and pretty consuming, I am thankful that this is now an anomaly and no longer the norm. I’m thankful that I can still get some exercise in and maintain my fitness enough that I’m not having to start over when I recover. A commitment to exercise even when I’m struggling, and to be smart enough not to overdo it or exasperate the injury, helps me stay focused on my long term fitness goals.

It’s not about giving 100% a hundred percent of the time. It’s about showing up every day and doing something to care for myself. Some days that means pushing what I can do. Some days that means choosing one part of my routine to do at maximum effort. And some days that means doing the bare minimum. What’s not a viable option is opting out.

Master the art of showing up

The biggest change I’ve made to taking care of myself in the past few years is this:

“When determining the size or complexity of a new habit ask yourself, “What can I stick to—even on my worst day?”

Start there. Master the art of showing up. Then advance.” ~ James Clear

I’m not in the mood to work out today, but I’ll go get on my row machine for 10 minutes. That would be it, but I’m also going to run the weight club this morning and I’ll do a bit of weights. Then one of our students ends the session leading us through 15 minutes of yoga.

I could skip the row machine, I’ve got an excuse, I’m doing weight club. But how hard is it to do 10 minutes on the row machine listening to my audiobook? It’s faster than 20 minutes on the bicycle or treadmill. These are the minimums I allow myself. I know I can do these things even when I don’t want to. I know that I don’t have to go all out, I just have to put in the time. That’s what I can do on my worst day… I can go through the motions for 10 or 20 minutes.

Sometimes that’s all I really do… go through the motions. But more often than not, after planning to do just the minimum, I end up pushing myself just a little harder than expected. The plan is to show up, but I do more. That’s what happens when you master the art of showing up.

So just show up, and maybe you’ll do more. You just need to commit to showing up and doing the minimum, and being ok with when that’s all you do. Be happy with this low bar on your low days… and you’ll be amazed how often you achieve more.

Just do it… just show up!