Physical Health Lets you look good in your jeans, and wrestle bears

health
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Physical health is not bought, it’s rented and rent is due every day. Physical health is the basis of energy, and thus the source of success, and a key saw to sharpen. Physical health requires weight, fitness, and sleep.

Why? So you can look good in your jeans? So you can wrestle bears?

I watch Fitness TikTok. One of the lines I loved: I do not do kettlebells so I look good in my jeans. I do kettlebells so I can wrestle bears. You get both of course, looking good in your jeans, pride/showing off/desire, but more importantly wrestling bears, being able to rise up to take on any challenge life throws at you. I do this to wrestle bears.

Weigh Yourself

Weight is essential because it reduces the effort required to do physical activities, and because it reduces the risk of diseases.

Weight is “calories in” minus “calories out.” Diet dominates calories in, exercise has a small contribution. A great way to see this is comparing what you eat to physical activity. A box of French fries adds 400 calories to your day, but running for 30 minutes burns 300 calories.

Set a weight goal, and check progress towards the goal weekly. It’s easy for your weight to gradually creep up, and keep creeping up. Thus, I strongly recommend committing to not letting your weight exceed your goal for too long. Personally, I set a weight pledge every month, and never exceed that weight.

Some people feel dieting is shameful. I couldn’t disagree more. Dieting shows you care about health and are doing something about it.

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Strength and Cardio Training

Fitness is essential because it’s the limiting factor to what you can do.

Fitness can be endurance or strength. For the majority of activities, endurance dominates, but some minimal strength is also required. For example, being able to run 30 minutes ensures you won’t be out of breath when you need to hustle to catch the bus, but being able to lift 100 lbs doesn’t help you in many situations. Being able to lift 10 lbs is important though, so don’t completely ignore strength.

I recommend doing the most vigorous cardio activity you can comfortably do multiple times a week. It’s easy to skip your activity, so try to set it up so you don’t have excuses to skip.

Personally, I run 4 miles on a treadmill multiple times a week at the gym. I run inside so weather can’t keep me from running, and I keep gym clothes in a locker at the gym so I can’t have the “I forgot my gym shoes” excuse either.

Sleeping Soundly

Sleep is essential because it allows your body to heal, your brain to think clearly, and you to perform well throughout the day.

Sleep is a personal thing, with different people requiring different amounts. The amount of sleep you need should be dictated by how tired you feel. I recommend getting as much sleep as you need.

Personally, I set an alarm and always wake up at the same time, regardless of how tired I am. When I’m not getting enough sleep I actually reduce my caffeine to make sure I’m so tired, I fall asleep early. Many people feel they don’t have enough time for sleep, but I couldn’t disagree more. Not sleeping makes everything worse, resulting in you getting less done. Getting enough sleep shows you want to get the most done in your waking hours.

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FAQ

How should I start?

My health is in the shitter - and I’m doing none of these. How should I start?

First good for you! Realizing you need to take action is a huge first step. Realizing you need to start small and deliberate is the next huge step.

I’d start with cardio exercise (e.g. endurance fitness). That will give you the most energy, which you’ll require to bootstrap the other disciplines. After you’ve been doing that for a month or so, I’d tackle sleep and when that feels stable I’d add weight loss.

How long should I exercise?

I’m in for cardio - How should I start, how long should I go?

First rule of starting new habits - make it easier than you can accomplish. To that end, I’d start at an easy pace for as long as you can (up to 30 minutes) then gradually increase the duration till you can do 30 minutes comfortably. Once you’re at 30 minutes gradually raise the intensity (no more than 10% / week) so that you’re continuing to push at an easy pace without feeling like you’re pushing too hard.

Why 30 minutes?

I don’t know if there’s any science here, but my target is 30 minutes of cardio.

For me, it’s long enough to work up a sweat, but short enough to not eat up my day. I’ve read that you should either do 30 minutes of low to medium intensity exercise daily or 20 minutes of high intensity exercise 3 times a week. When starting out or when old, I’d recommend low weights high reps to reduce the risk of quitting and injury.

What is your cardio HIIT protocol?

“Tony the trainer” taught me a great protocol I swear by it, and think I came close to it accidentally before.

TL;DR: All that matters is training at 90% of your max HR. 15 minutes a day 3x a week and you’re set. But good luck doing 15 minutes at 90% max HR. Break it down as follows. 5 min on, 5 off, 4 on, 4 off, … 1 on, 1 off. You should get a curve as follows

TODO: Add heart graphs

What’s great about this protocol is it works at any fitness level. If all you can do is walk to get winded, walk till you hit the goal. If you can run, run. BUT, don’t look at speed, look at heart rate.

Other stuff:

  • How I got lucky to re-start it as started by running, but calf injury made this happen
  • Used to do infinite elliptical
  • Show impact on HRV and Resting Heart Rate
  • How quickly you need to scale up the intensity.
  • The goal is not “muscle strength”, it’s cardio strength, so back down when you hit your HR max, regardless of how tired you are.

My body part really hurts, what should I do?

I’ve had lots of injuries, here’s my various braces

I found these books especially good to understand how body parts get hurt, and what to do about it. It really helped me understand what my physiotherapist had me doing:

Should I get a trainer?

Trainers are expensive, but heart attacks are even more expensive, and on top of money, they really suck up your energy and reduce your quality of life.

I put off getting a trainer for 20 years. I thought I was very knowledgeable in exercise, physiology, and was motivated having a gym routine where I went every morning to do cardio, and I wasn’t interested in getting strong. Eventually, I decided I’d like some more injury prevention, so got a trainer and told him my goal was to increase my injury resilience, and he said OK, let’s do mobility workouts then.

  • The mobility movements are more strenuous than my normal cardio routines. Every movement we do seemed like it could happen naturally through day-to-day activities and felt incredibly weak, a real warning to injury.

  • He also took a look at my cardio routine, and changed it to be a high-intensity training - Wow, same amount of time, so much more intense, and so energized afterward.

  • Many days I feel lazy, I turn off my brain and just let him tell me what to do, and when to push myself.

  • I’ve had RSI in my wrists, injuries everywhere, and as we do exercises I can be like, oh this feels like it’ll give out, and we instantly change the exercise.

In summary, trainers are worth it.

Should I do kettlebells?

TODO: Make kettlebells its own page

When I started working out with a trainer, they introduced me to kettlebells. Kettlebells are a rock with a handle. What could be cooler than that?

I instantly liked Turkish Get Ups (TGUs) they have a nice flow and feel great. The trainer tried to get me to do swings, but I’m afraid of ballistic exercises so declined.

A year later I decided to try them, and I love them! At 44 every day I woke up my back would be stiff till I stretched out. When I started doing swings, the next day my back was as loose as a 30-year-old’s :)

Swings:

I also wrote an app to make sure my swings were good:

TGUs:

  • Video coming

I’m applying a goal from a book called Kettlebell Simple and Sinister. Targets:

  • 10x10 @ 32 KG Two Arm Swings (100!) (Achieved November ‘23), but then regressed due to injury.
  • 10x10 @ 32 KG (50 per arm) One Arm Swings
  • 5x1 @ 32KG -(5 per arm) Achieved January ‘24

What’s it like waking up at 5 am

The Atlantic summarized it perfectly

They walk among us, endowed with a superpower invisible to the naked eye. Before an important early meeting, they never have to forgo a shower and settle for dry shampoo and a baby wipe. They rarely wake with a jolt at 10 in the morning and stare groggily at a phone screen with five missed calls and texts that say, “You on your way? ETA

But a few points to add after you read the article:

  1. There’s no free lunch, I still need 8 hours of sleep which has me in bed at 8 asleep by 9:30.
  2. I don’t pop out of bed bushy-tailed. I still need an alarm, and I still hit snooze. Except, the day I’m lazy and whack snooze 6 times, it’s still 5:30 am.
  3. The “productivity advantage” for me is motivation starts strong when I get up and declines through the day, gone by 9 pm when I’m on the couch, binging YouTube with my beer and chips. By contrast, at 5 am I’m ready to do something useful, and no one is awake, and nothing is open to distract me.
  4. Sometimes my body goes a bit batty and I wake up early, that has me waking up at 3:30 am which is annoying, as by noon I’m pretty toast and have to fight to stay awake till 8 pm.
  5. Not gonna lie, I love the feeling of pride when I tell folks I get up crazy early. ps. Being a nerd I use a bunch of toys to help with my health.