(Breather) Why not end 2019 with a bang and two-part wrap-up show with some observations about what has worked for me in recent times and hopefully some tips and inspiration for you in a variety of areas.
This show was inspired by numerous email exchanges with my childhood friend and devoted podcast listener Eddie Blau. Eddie is a busy business all-star and family man in Southern California trying his best to stay healthy and fit and delay age-related decline. We like to discuss the various topics and hot trends of the day, and try to sort through what’s hype and what’s sensible. Hence, I coughed up a disparate list of stuff that seems to be working for me to the extent that I feel noticeably more healthy and energetic in 2019 than I have in recent years.
The main reason to claim success in 2019 is a leveling out crash and burn patterns that have plagued me forever. What happens is I feel great, have good daily energy and productivity, perform magnificent athletic feats and recover quickly, and generally hum along on all cylinders. Then, out of nowhere, I have down periods, featuring nagging muscle soreness, poor energy and motivation for workouts, and desperation afternoon naps where I feel like crap and have to leave the office to crash out for 20-40 minutes. Whatever lulls I have felt recently have righted more quickly, likely thanks to the aggregate of the 10 reasons I’m going to discuss.
I cover a ton of ground with this list, so I had to break the presentation into two shows. Here are the first 5 on the list, and I’ll cover items 6-10 on the ensuing show. I’ll also cover three “needs to improve” areas, so I’m not all about peaches and bubble gum. Everything is a work in progress trying to Get Over Myself and get over the figurative high jump bar with peak performance goals in all areas of life.
1. Family & relationship health: Many experts content this is your single most important criteria for a healthy, happy life.
2. Finances and mindset: Be grateful for what you have instead of FOMO, and also embrace the abundance mentality.
3. Sprinting: Modifying my sprint workouts to Dr. Craig Marker’s HIRT strategy (listen to my show on the topic.)
4. Micro-workouts: Adding in brief bursts of explosive effort throughout the day (I recorded a show on this topic, too!)
5. Doing my morning flexibility/mobility routine every single day: Helps me wake up and also launch all other workouts from a higher fitness/injury prevention platform.
TIMESTAMPS:
How Brad kicked his consistent afternoon nap habit [9:10].
Try taking the Braverman test to identify your neurotransmitter profile and track your patterns [12:10].
Science shows that family and relationship health is the #1 predictor of your state of health and happiness [17:45].
Why Dr. Sinha says FOMO is actually a disease that has metabolic consequences [20:15].
John Gray’s perspective on relationship dynamics that changed Brad’s life [25:11].
“You only need one homerun to wipe out a lot of false starts and strikeouts” – Mark Sisson [30:33].
Why HIRT is superior in terms of efficiency and recovery compared to HIIT [36:05].
Ammonia toxicity is a byproduct of overly stressful workouts [40:15].
The average person is inactive 21 out of 24 hours a day [44:22].
LINKS:
- HIRT episode of Get Over Yourself
- Micro-workout episode of Get Over Yourself
- The Braverman Test
- The Decline Spiderman
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad: 00:01 Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author, an athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit and happy in hectic, high-stress, modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge and expertly balance that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.
Brad: 03:52 Greetings, listeners, it’s a 2019 wrap-up show with your host, Brad Kearns. How bout this title? 10 reasons why I’m better, stronger, and faster in 2019 and some needs to improve areas. You know what? I was just communicating with my devoted listener, slash childhood friend, slash corporate family all around life superstar Eddie Blau from Calabasas, California about how things are going, what things are working, what aren’t. My ancestral supplements I think have really boosted my overall energy recovery. But is it all about the supplement? Probably not. But I identify that as one of the things that I think has really made a difference to nourish myself at the cellular level with these organ meats that I still don’t eat enough of in my daily diet, but I’m doing a lot better with that.
Brad: 04:47 And that opened up a whole lengthy email exchange about tracking things, uh, seeing what’s working. And I realized that I’m a much better in 2019 than in previous years and even previous decades. I think I really got out of shape in my, let’s see, late thirties early forties when I was done racing, I had no more compelling goals to get me up every single day and train all day. So I was eased into family life and raising little kids and I guess kinda got soft and comfortable in comparison to training all day, which is probably a good balance when you’re looking at the overall, uh, continuum of life. Uh, but then I remember when I started coaching, uh, my son and daughter, when they got into the early years of soccer and basketball and distance running, I used to have a kids’ fitness charity where we’d visit the schools and put on these wonderful days where they got into cardiovascular exercise.
Brad: 05:44 It was called Running School. So around that time I realized that I wanted to be a participatory coach, not just some guy with a whistle and yelling at little kids, telling them what to do and to hustle more. So I got into the mix every single practice for years and years, bringing a hundred percent energy. I learned that from another great dad, Dennis Curley indiminating them in basketball. And sure enough, they grew to be big and strong and tough and the experience was great rather than easing off and being soft. So I did that to my son and his teammates too. Uh, and for many years I was the self-proclaimed MVP of both the soccer and the basketball teams. I was unstoppable. Uh, when they were in grades three all the way up to eighth grade, I was still, uh, starting on the all star team and then things changed and dudes got taller and bigger and quicker and stronger.
Brad: 06:39 And I was absolutely blown off the courts. I went from MVP in the middle school years to, uh, cheering dad on the sidelines, which is a great place for dads to be, uh, rather than meddling with the coaching experience when you’re dealing with the guys who do it for a living in high school. Uh, but that really motivated me to get back, get my, sorry ass back into shape, uh, into my forties decades when this stuff was taking place. And I’ve leveraged that fitness commitment into my fifties where now with the sports that I’m focused on, like speed golf and breaking the Guinness world record at the age of 53, I’d have to say I’m better than ever. So let’s get into the how’s and the why’s and the take home tips. And especially starting out with the, uh, disclaimer, the warning, uh, let’s sift through the bullshit of people touting a certain, uh, regimens, beverages, supplements, uh, lifestyle practices that are transforming their life and making them 10 X more productive and all this binder.
Brad: 07:43 That’s why I titled the show, get over yourself. So I want to be real, tell you some things that are really working and not blow them out of proportion and be full of blather rather than a common sense and hopefully interesting and practical tips. Uh, why do I have this attitude? Oh my gosh, it goes back to when I was racing on the triathlon circuit and we’d get approached all the time by people with whatever it was, a special bicycle component or a nutritional supplement and they’d bring their research with them and claim that you would get a 5% performance improvement by taking this pill or using this bike or this technology. And I’m like, eh. So let me think. Uh, the races are two hours long on the Olympic distance professional circuit. So you’re telling me that a 5% improvement in a two hour race is six minutes.
Brad: 08:35 So basically I would jog into the finish line. Is the winner, uh, go ahead to the showers, come back and cheer for the second place guy rather than racing my ass off to the point of puking, uh, to try to get fifth instead of fourth? Nah, I don’t think so. I think the, um, the human, the adrenaline response, the natural, uh, internal fight or flight mechanisms are so much more powerful than anything, uh, yet invented in terms of a consumable or a training technology. Okay. So that said, here’s what’s different, here’s where I feel like things are working better, uh, in 2019, uh, than ever before. And my markers are basically, one of them is the minimization of a pattern that I’ve experienced for many years, which was feeling absolutely trashed in the afternoon and desperately needing a nap, like being unable to function at my work desk.
Brad: 09:29 And perhaps this was, wussy boy mentality part of it. But I really did feel these afternoon lulls frequently. I don’t know, I’d have to go down for a 20 to 40 minute nap after, which I usually felt fantastic and back to work and everything was great. Uh, but many, many times over, and let’s say the past decade or even 15 years, I’d come up with debilitating injuries, muscle strains, things like that that would set me off. Uh, my back went out severely, uh, two times in my early forties. The second time was so bad, uh, basically was in, in bed or on the couch for about three or four days and then limping around for another three or four or five days. And then probably two weeks where I was extremely debilitated by a random event, which was, uh, leaning over the kitchen counter to have a few more bites of scrambled eggs before we headed out, uh, for a road trip.
Brad: 10:25 And my back just grabbed on me while I was eating the eggs. I collapsed to the ground in pain. I could barely breathe. And my kids who were little at that time were like kicking me in the ribs and they thought I was teasing and joking. They’re like, come on, get up Dad. And I’m like, can’t breathe. Uh, and I, when I went through that ordeal, I swore to myself that never again would I have such a debilitating event. So frustrating and seemingly coming out of nowhere, obviously it was on the heels of working out and traumatizing my back and then having a minor incident as many people can reference where you quote, throw your back out. And I never knew what people meant by that term until I did it myself. Uh, but when I got up off the ground, I swore that I would get my abdominal, my core area so strong that I would never again put my back under challenge.
Brad: 11:13 And I have stuck to that commitment for, it’s probably been 12, 13 or 14 years ago that now I work my core really well with the stretch cords and various other exercises, the decline, Spiderman pushups that you can search. Brad Kearns Decline Spiderman on YouTube and see these difficult core exercises that I do as a normal, everyday part of life so that I don’t ever have back pain or back trouble like I did on that horrifying event. So minimal, uh, much, much fewer debilitating injuries, uh, much less occasions of, uh, feeling trashed in the afternoon and desperately needing a nap. Not that I still don’t take naps, but everything’s kind of leveled off. So I’ve basically experienced a leveling off of the crash and burn patterns that I’ve been plagued with, I’ll say, uh, for my entire adult life and my entire athletic career. And we can look into genetic testing and things like that to where I’m sort of a crash and burn guy rather than a steady state guy.
Brad: 12:16 And I think there’s a lot to that. Your basic nature, your neurotransmitter profile, things like that that you can track and identify the patterns that you operate in and try to honor those with your decisions about training and your work day and things like that. So I will reference you to Google the term, the Braverman test. And this is a neurotransmitter, a dominance and deficiency patterns that you can identify by taking a very lengthy and interesting questionnaire where they’re asking you all kinds of personality attributes and lifestyle attributes. Like a question I enjoy mixing with large gatherings and noisy, fun social events, or I like to be home by myself with a good book by the fire. And you answer like a one through 10 scale and you compile all this information and the Braverman test is actually been found to be more accurate in identifying your neurotransmitter profile than blood tests in the laboratory.
Brad: 13:17 So answer the questions honestly, and then you total up your numbers and you can look at you identify your dominant neurotransmitter and your deficient neurotransmitter. So the one that most is easily depleted and the one that you’re dominant in. And of course the four neurotransmitters they’re tracking are GABA, acetylcholine, dopamine, and serotonin. So interestingly on my test, I turned out to be GABA dominant and also GABA deficient, which is possible. You can have the same, uh, neurotransmitter to be your dominant one and your deficient one. So GABA is known for its effect on calming and balancing. And I’m possibly relating that to, I might be botching the science here, so excuse me for uh, Dr Braverman and Dave Delay who turned me on to this neurotransmitter test if I’m making the wrong insight. But I thought that I’m a little more sensitive to ups and downs than someone who plugs away who is able to plug away on a more steady day after day pattern.
Brad: 14:20 I referenced Mia Moore. She’s incredible. Her work hours are far more than I could ever handle myself without crashing and burning. Uh, and then we did a DNA fit genetic testing on her and it turned out her endurance to strength power ratio in the muscle fibers was something like 82% endurance, 18% strength power. So that’s the Energizer bunny going and going and going for all day long, 12 hours powering along with no complaint. Uh, I did some inquiry to the experts at DNA fit and they’re doing more genetic testing, uncovering more research, suggesting that it goes beyond just your muscle fiber and your athletic training decisions and training patterns. But it can also be associated with your cognitive function. So if you have a high profile of endurance genetics that might play out in the gym as well as in the workplace, uh, and listeners to the show might be familiar with the commercial that I run and I’ve discussed this on other shows, the shocking insight that I received when I was testing my genetics with DNA fit.com where I came out to be 54% strength power and only 46% endurance.
Brad: 15:37 Oh my gosh. And I’ve spent my whole life as an endurance athlete, basically going against my genetic profile with the attempt to maintain a, a high level endurance training pattern as I did when I was a professional triathlete. And I was constantly complaining about bombing out and getting exhausted while the other guys got up every day and went for hours and hours on end. Thanks to Mark Sisson, my coach during my peak years as an endurance performer on the triathlon circuit. He’s the one that convinced me to kind of step away from the predominant, uh, high mileage, chronic exercise patterns and just punch it once in a while and do these, uh, tremendous workouts that would be called breakthrough workouts that were difficult or challenging enough to push my body to a higher fitness level. So having to figure that out, having to align with my genetic profile that I was a little more strength, power and not an entirely endurance built for endurance freak.
Brad: 16:35 Uh, that was a big help. And I guess this can blend in if I’m rambling. Uh, I’m blending that insight together with the neurotransmitter profiles and you can go do all this techie stuff and take the test and take the DNA fit test would be really fun. I highly recommend it, but even if not, you can kind of reflect and see what type of a daily routine works for you and what stuff you feel uncomfortable with. How much downtime do you need? Do you need to be by yourself a lot? After a busy day at work, do you need to be extremely consistent and regimented with your workout patterns such that you have to set the alarm and show up at the gym every single day at 6:00 AM or the wheels will fall off entirely from your fitness endeavors? Or do you like to go with the flow a little bit more? And then you figure these things out and put yourself into positions where you will succeed in situations where you will succeed. So that’s some of my intro to the 10 reasons why I’m better, stronger, faster in 2019 and then ending the show with some needs to improve category items less. Do you think I’m just blowing my own horn all the way to the finish line. I’m a work in progress. A lot of things are changing, evolving, uh, but I’m trying my hardest.
Brad: 17:50 So number one would be family relationship health. And this is arguably the number one predictor of your state of health, happiness and contentment in life. More and more science is showing this. We emphasize this attribute in our new book, Keto for Life, where you’re talking about the diet and the exercise for years and years, where communicating this great information that you shouldn’t eat grains or sugar or refined industrial seed oils, but trumping everything is the quality of your personal relationships. Esther Perel, the relationship therapist that is prominent in podcast, bestselling author, she says, the quality of your relationships determine the quality of your life straight up period. End of sentence. I feel like I have an unfair advantage here because I have Mia Moore in my life and it’s like when I just come into her energy field, I experience a sense of calmness and happiness as the default setting just being around her because that’s how she lives her life. So this is what a loving partnership, a romantic partnership is all about, is facing that difficult, the challenges, the ups and downs of daily life with a cheerleader on your side and listen to our show about these topics. Go back into the archives. You know who has been talking about this stuff recently is Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. Couple of the richest men on earth. And these guys have been getting some attention lately, huh?
Brad: 19:22 If you’re listening to the, uh, democratic presidential debates, this line has been spouted many times, hard to forget, uh, where the candidates have mentioned that the three wealthiest Americans have more wealth than 50% of the population. Ah, pretty scary. And this, uh, inequality of income distribution has widespread, uh, social implications. I think most people would agree that they’re not in favor. That it’s a tough one. When you look at the Scandinavian countries, I did a show on the happiest countries in the world. Uh, we’re talking about places like Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland. One attribute they have in common that, uh, researchers believe is a huge element in their happiness quotient is they have that income equality. So they get to escape the disease state of FOMO, which is so prominent in the rabid consumerism culture. I did a great show with Dr Ron Sinha. So go listen to that.
Brad: 20:26 Remember he’s the doctor in Silicon Valley who takes care of large employee work groups for some of the most prominent tech companies. Facebook, Google, Oracle, all the big shots. So he is working with one of the most affluent employee populations on earth. They’re a median income and Silicon Valley is somewhere around triple the American median income. Uh, the median home price in the relevant counties is 1.3 million, 1.2 million for a simple family home. So we’re talking about, uh, an excess of income and wealth. But Dr Sinha reports that FOMO is so pervasive that he’s actually identifying it as a disease that has metabolic consequences. So people stressing about keeping up with the Joneses and especially having their kids keep up with the incredible pace that these poor kids are being pushed to. Uh, this all blew up with the college admissions scandal. So beyond the scandal, we have this as a fundamental element of daily life for the, uh, the high performing hard driving teenager in these high income families.
Brad: 21:34 And it turns out to be disastrous to health. So let’s listen to the rich dudes reflect and look back after being on this incredible path to wealth accumulation. Uh, maybe we can learn something from them instead of just wishing that, wow, wouldn’t that be cool to have anything you want all the time forever? Well, maybe these guys have their priorities kind of recalibrated. And so here’s what they say. Here’s what a Buffet said. 89 years old man. He says, basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you if you get to my agent life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster. That is the ultimate test of how you have lived your life. End quote from Warren Buffet. And out of all the people you love back, the most important person by far according to buffet, is your spouse quote. I can’t overemphasize how important that is. And this was a pulled from an interview that he had that he did with Bill Gates back in 2017. I’m referencing a, uh, internet article, uh, detailing what these guys were talking about. So if you have a strong social support system, you have that strong social network. We detailed these concepts in our new book, Keto for Life, how important they are to your overall health and longevity. Uh, you have much lower, much less risk of suffering from depression and social isolation, which has become so prominent in modern life.
Brad: 23:17 Uh, we referenced some studies in the book suggesting that the average American has fewer than three close friends. The average is closer to one, and the definition of a close friend is someone who would drop everything, come over at a moment’s notice if you have a crisis, like your dog’s run away in the middle of the night, or you have to move out and you need to dedicate a weekend on short notice to helping your close friend, uh, move somewhere or do something important and urgent in their life. The researchers say that this has been a trend that’s happened. Uh, in very recent years, people have dropped off, their averages have fallen. And a lot of it’s due to a social media hyper-connectivity tech addiction, uh, digital relationships, crowding out time for interpersonal relationships, digital entertainment, just that fast paced, fast moving life. One thing I lament is that, uh, the modern economy and the opportunities and all these positive things that we can be really mobile and relocate easily, but it also has pulled families, uh, to further distance than they have been in past generations. So it’s kinda tough when you’re trying to keep in touch with your close friends and family and you find yourself far away for whatever reason.
Brad: 24:31 Oftentimes it’s a job, an opportunity or a personal preference. Uh, so there’s good and then there’s some of this stuff that’s tough. I guess you just have to make a better effort. So this positive family and relationship health is such a huge component of feeling better. And I’m gonna say on this topic, I’m not referencing that everything is rosy, peachy keen and wonderful. And 2019 especially. So because, uh, my children did a wonderful achievement or my brother got promoted and uh, took us all to a trip to the Eiffel tower. No, no. It’s the ability to go with the flow and get accustomed and comfortable with change and uncertainty and difficulty in family and friends and social interactions. Realizing that difficult relationship dynamics will not change. And so developing the ability to accept them or accept them better, not perfectly right. We’re a work in progress here, but accept them with an open heart and Oh my gosh, the John Gray show that I talk about so frequently that changed my life.
Brad: 25:40 These insights that you are compelled to honor the hormonal differences between men and women and make the relationship work accordingly. Remembering that profound advice that Gray dispense to all males to shut the F up when you have a negative emotional charge rather than turn into bitchy boy, which in many ways in modern culture we’ve been given permission to, right? We want men to be more vulnerable and expressive and communicative and don’t stuff your feelings. John Gray’s like, hell no fools. Shut the F up until you feel okay until you feel calm and level headed, then speak your mind and then have perhaps a difficult conversation. But anything and everything, all feedback can be dispensed with loving kindness rather than emotional charge. So, whew. Good one for the men. Females. Remember your insight. Oh yeah. Females should express every thing as a preference rather than a complaint.
Brad: 26:39 Even a minor complaint will bug the crap out of your male partner because your man’s driving force is deep biological drive deep down underneath the surface. He wants to be the hero in the story. So minor nitpicking is a major, major thing. Oh, I listened to another great show recently with John Gray. It was on the life stylist podcast. Good stuff. And he said, Oh, you want to hear some magic words? Ladies, here’s the magic words to preface every comment that you deliver to your man. “It’s not a big deal, but blank, blank, blank.” Oh, we had some fun with this, Mia, more than I did recently cause I left the door unlocked to the home. Uh, on two separate occasions. Uh, in a short timeframe, why the heck? I don’t know, man. I’m spacing. Could be blamed on digital technology. Maybe I was on a phone call on the way out of the house, but I left the door unlocked.
Brad: 27:36 Terrible mistake. Sorry. It’ll never happen again. And then it happened what, uh, five days later or something. And so on the second time, uh, she, I think it was a text message says not a big deal, but you left the fricking door open again. Okay. So men do not speak with a negative emotional charge. Stuff it go off and do a testosterone boosting activities, then come back to the table. Females express everything as a preference. And finally, this is Brad coming in now. Uh, John Gray has given us his great stuff. I think we have to realize that relationship and personal struggle and loss is going to be a part of life. That you can’t fix your kids’ problems. You can’t steer everything into beautiful, smooth seas. And you also can’t escape loss and suffering. It’s part of life. A good example in 2019 for the current family was losing Dr. Walter Kearns, my father at the age of 97 so what an incredible life and how can you ask for more than having a wonderful loving relationship with dad, husband, father, grandfather, and incredible health for almost his entire life until he started to slow down at the end.
Brad: 28:49 And when you slow down and you’ve had a great life, it’s kind of time to go rather than have that alternate ending of more pain and suffering and a more arduous demise. So all I was was thankful for all the wonderful years and losing somebody is never easy. But again, you have to appreciate the positive aspects and not dwell on the negative parts of your overall, of your family and relationship health.
Brad: 29:16 So that’s a long discussion of number one on the list of 10 number two, here’s a weird one that I threw in there. Finances and mindset. So changing your mindset about wealth, budget, income, all those things, I realized can be a health boosting opportunity rather than just focusing on the nitty gritty, the nuts and bolts and thinking that if I can make more money, I’ll be happier. And I will admit that I fell victim to a lot of that FOMO mindset or that consumerism, that scarcity mindset where you feel like the source of your troubles is not having enough and getting more will solve everything.
Brad: 30:00 So when you can adopt an alternative mindset, first of all, realizing that money is a renewable resource rather than a fixed commodity. Like there’s only a thousand pounds of gold in the world and you only have one ounce and Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos have half the gold and the rest of the country as the other half. All that kind of stuff. This topic reminds me of some great insights we enjoyed from one of the early interviews on the Get Over Yourself podcast with Mark Sisson and what an incredible entrepreneurial journey he has had. And of course I’ve had the privilege of learning many insights, uh, one-to-one and interactions with him over the past decade and longer. Actually, we’ve known each other for 30 years and been working hard on the primal thing for over a decade, about 11 years straight now. Full gas pedal on. And some of the great things he said in his interview, like you only need one home run to wipe out a lot of false starts and a strike outs and base hits from a years and years accumulated.
Brad: 31:04 You always have that hope. He’s speaking mostly to the entrepreneur there. Many people are in a different framework, but changing your mindset that maybe you have everything that you need right now and everything is categorized as wants rather than needs and pulling out with all the possible energy you can muster, pulling out of that FOMO mindset, which is so destructive to your health. Uh, so when you can accept the ups and downs of let’s say, your financial journey, your income, your wealth building, and be open to all possibilities, realizing that the renewable resources there, you can work hard. You can pick your feet back up. You don’t have to get discouraged or feel down on yourself. And then you learn to value yourself more that you are deserving of the good things that come to you. And I think that’s a big problem for many people.
Brad: 31:56 Uh, there’s a showing listen to again on Lifestyles podcast with someone who is known as a wealth manifester, I guess a manifestor of all kinds. Lacey Phillips, and she was doing her thing and telling her story. And most people, many people might shake their head and scoff at this kind of a mindset where you’re just manifesting your dreams in your life. And those of us who are shaking their heads and scoffing, uh, it’s not gonna happen for you because you don’t believe in it. Pretty tricky, huh? So like, wait a second, let’s sit back for a little bit and listen to this lady talk about how she manifests things. And some of the more concrete topics are you feel that you’re more deserving, you end up getting let’s say a higher hourly rate or you end up getting not screwed over by people because you’re too flimsy and fluttery when it comes to negotiations and honoring, uh, what you have to offer.
Brad: 32:55 And I definitely relate to this because I’m kind of a cool chill guy and if you do business with me, uh, handshake’s cool. And this is cool and that’s cool. And cutting the contract and half of what we originally agreed upon is cool too. Cause I don’t want you to feel bad or want you to be mad at me and Oh boy, you’ll start walking down that path. Guess what? That’s the path that you’re going to get walked on and walk on yourself. So kind of stepping up and realizing that there’s plenty to go around for everybody, that we can come from this mindset of abundance rather than scarcity and then living your life in that manner can be a huge difference. This is one of the great insights I remember from my studies in economics at UC Santa Barbara was this, uh, abundance concept, the economic concept of abundance.
Brad: 33:42 And some of the, uh, tidbits I continued to remember from, Oh, this is, you know, what, 30 years ago or something, uh, why are there seven fast food restaurants on a single busy intersection in an urban area? Wouldn’t it be better if Taco Bell went a mile down the street so they wouldn’t have to compete with McDonald’s, burger King, Wendy’s, God can’t remember all those names. I can’t believe I remember, haven’t been to any of them in decades. But the reason that the fast food restaurants are concentrated in one spot is because then all the consumers will associate that intersection with fast food. And thereby, they all mutually benefit from being the fast food, uh, epicenter, uh, at the road stop on the interstate. Ditto for the five shoe stores in the shopping mall. Wouldn’t it be better for one of the shoe stores to set up shop across town so they wouldn’t have any competition and people might even be closer to that shoe store? No, because when you go to the shopping mall, you know you’re going to have a fantastic selection of shoes and you’re going to get spilled over benefit in both directions and that, my friends, is the economic theory of abundance in real life. Examples that hopefully you’ll never forget because, Oh my gosh, think about how that relates to things in your own real life and how things can be less stressful when you think of money in a different context than that scarcity mindset. Okay, so how about we get our mindset all fixed and then we add a zero to our income as Mark Sisson likes to say. Then you’re going to have all the secrets lined up. You’re going to have Mo, Mo, Mo, and you’re going to have a Momo Moe mindset. Anyway, correcting some of those flawed mindsets related to finances. I’m going to say is number two on personal list. Okay, so we had the family and the relationship health.
Brad: 35:41 We have finances and improved mindset and then we shift gears a little bit and I plugged my fantastic sprint workout that I have changed the structure of to my great benefit. I Did a whole show on this, uh, honoring Dr. Craig marker and his concept of high intensity repeat training as opposed to the more popular, more common high intensity interval training, which characterizes a workout where cumulative fatigue is a factor where you’re trying to hit these interval performances over and over again with insufficient rest to be fully refreshed and energized before the success of interval. Such that when you’re going to spinning class and you’re doing 10 times two minute sprints, uh, the seventh, eighth, ninth, and 10th ones are pure torture and you end the class or whatever the example is exhausted and depleted, then you go home and eat more food. You sit around more and rest more during the day. This is called the compensation theory of exercise, whereby the calories you burn during a strenuous workout are doing a pattern of strenuous chronic workouts, pretty much get washed out by increased laziness and increased caloric consumption. And in my case, the sprint workouts that I’ve performed for over a decade were really, really tough, especially for an old guy. I wouldn’t rest that much in between sprints because I have good conditioning and I felt like, Hey, I can toe the line again and go blast another one and I do the workout.
Brad: 37:12 I’d feel great because you’re always feeling good during the heat of the battle. When the stress hormones are flowing and the muscles are inflamed and ready to perform at peak performance efforts, but then we sit back and reflect over the ensuing 24, 36, and 48 hours and repeatedly I would have these crash and burn incidents. Like I mentioned at the start of the show where I had to have a nap. I was just toast at 2:00 PM like, what’s wrong with me? If I were in a corporate setting right now, I’d be in trouble because my going down under my desk for a nap, I don’t care what happens. I attribute some of these crash and burn patterns to overly stressful, high intensity workouts that were too difficult to recover from. Of course the sprint workouts got me in shape and of course I felt like a badass for only resting 20 seconds and then doing another high-intensity 2o second sprint.
Brad: 38:05 But when I changed my strategy to honor this high intensity repeat training, the key concepts were more rest in between explosive peak performance efforts and shortening the duration of the effort to minimize the cellular destruction that occurs when you ask yourself to sprint at maximum intensity for longer than a certain period of time. And the 20 second was kind of the magic number whereby Dr Marker and others are recommending when when it’s time to do maximum intensity sprints, 10 to 20 seconds is the magic duration where you’re getting a lot of fitness benefit, but you’re stopping just before you have that exponential increase in what they call disassembling and de-emanation of your cellular proteins. You’re basically igniting incinerating your cells to put out more energy immediately because you’re trying to continue with a maximum intensity effort. So when you do 30 second sprints or 60 second sprints during your Peloton class, or whoever is telling you to do 62nd sprints, it’s not really a sprint because you can’t sustain maximum output anyway for much longer than 20 or 30 seconds.
Brad: 39:18 So we’re keeping our sprints shorter and then we’re resting entirely until you feel completely refreshed and energized before a successive effort. So now my GoTo sprint workout is typically, uh, eight times 70 meters on the football field, which takes Oh, uh, I guess around 10 seconds and plenty of rest in between. So a minute, maybe a minute and a half rest in between these 70 meter sprints. And I can do those frequently. I can do them a couple times a week when I’m in a good training groups. Sometimes I fall off that pace cause I’m doing other stuff like speed golf tournaments, other difficult workouts. But the workout feels great. I walk away from the track feeling refreshed and energized rather than trashed. And then most importantly, I wake up the next morning. I don’t have sore calves, my arches aren’t aching. I don’t have all these delayed recovery symptoms, uh, caused by disassembling and de-enamnation and also another byproduct of an overly stressful workout where you ask yourself to perform at maximum intensity just for the sake of honoring, uh, the person on the screen or the live instructor is you get ammonia toxicity.
Brad: 40:28 So this, the byproduct of incinerating yourselves to generate immediate energy source for sprinting and sprinting and not resting enough before you do it again, is this ammonia toxicity, which is especially sensitive to the brain cells. The brain cells are the most sensitive to everything, including those sugar consumption habits you have. That’s why you know what the new, not even a nickname, the new name for the disease, patterns of cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s, dementia, et cetera. Type three diabetes because cognitive decline diseases are characterized by dysfunctional glucose metabolism in the brain. Just like in the body, you get diabetes when you have dysfunctional glucose metabolism. So the brain is so sensitive. That’s why we need to fuel ourselves with super foods and stay away from that crap, the nasty, toxic crap that’s the centerpiece of the standard American diet. But when you’re training too hard and doing these crazy workouts, especially if you’re an old guy like me, maybe when you’re 18 you can go to high school track and blast yourself and come along much better.
Brad: 41:33 Or if you’re a genetically gifted, elite Olympic athlete, those guys can do a different style of workout than the exact one that you might be trying to approximate on the Peloton bike or in the group exercise class because they recover more easily than the average person. But you’ve got to take it easy, rest more, and of course hit the high end, do those maximum intensity things. They have so many anti-aging benefits, but do them right. So number three was changing my sprint workout.
Brad: 42:02 Number four, adding micro workouts. I believe this to be one of the great breakthroughs, a revolution in the fitness industry where we change our mindset away from this all or nothing type of workout experience where, yeah, you got to get in your car, find a parking space, get a fresh towel, go show up, do the class for an hour, blast yourself with this chronically stressful workout pattern. And that has been our experience of the fitness lifestyle, the fitness industry for decades. That’s why so many people are on the damn sidelines because maybe they have some sensibility about them. I don’t want to kill my body like that. Or maybe subconsciously they’ve tried and been chewed up and spit out by the prevailing mindset of the fitness industry. So now we have micro workouts or mini workouts stepping into the picture where you can do a brief, uh, explosive effort of some kind or over the course of your busy day. It’s a wonderful concept that’s not going to burden anybody who says they’re too busy don’t have time, not in shape enough to complete the whole class a, I use the examples frequently where if I’m throwing out the garbage and my house gets what’s out on the side yard right next to the garbage can, it’s a hexagonal deadlift bar.
Brad: 43:23 So I go and do one set of deadlifts and then go back in the house after throwing away the garbage, I have a pull up bar hanging over the closet door. So if I happen to head into the closet door during the course of my busy day, I will haul off a single set of pull-ups, big deal. I’m not counting it in my workout log book and drawing circles and red pen around it like it was a great thing. But when it’s time to go do a proper workout, guess where I launch my fitness ambitions from? That’s right. A much, much higher platform than if I were to just sit around and go through my typical sedentary patterns of a typical modern lifestyle person’s workday and less, uh, those of us listening in the, uh, high labor professions. Then you got this licked already. You’re doing micro workouts during your busy day at the warehouse lifting boxes.
Brad: 44:15 But for most of us, we go do our impressive workout and then we go sit on our butt for most of the day, uh, 21 out of 24 hours a day. The average person is inactive. That’s commuting, working, sleeping, of course, which is good. And then, uh, engaging in digital entertainment. So finding ways to put your body under load over the course of the busy day, to the extent that they’re not time consuming, not physically stressful, where they’re going to interfere with your performance and recovery patterns on your regular workouts. That’s been a huge breakthrough for me. Listen to the entire show on that topic of micro workouts and sort of relatedly,
Brad: 44:53 but I’m calling this number five is doing my morning flexibility, mobility routine every single day. And I emphasize those last words because I don’t seem to be an every single day kind guy, uh, on any other account of whatever it is, a workout pattern or even a success pattern, uh, with my, uh, work matters that I’m engaging with.
Brad: 45:20 Like I wish I could say I wake up every morning, have a cup of coffee and write for two hours straight before I open email. But every day is kind of a, a fluid, uh, constantly changing, intuitive pattern of training, living, uh, deciding whether I’m going to go run errands at 10:00 AM or not do errands for a week. You know, you never know with Brad Kearns, I’m sorry to say, but guess what? Uh, since early 2017 so I’m coming up on three years. I have not missed a single day of this, uh, minimum 12 minute regimen where I’m doing an assortment of hamstring core exercises. Uh, kick outs, bicycle drills, and you can see this on YouTube, Brad Kearns morning flexibility routine. Uh, right there as soon as I get out of bed. And it’s been a wonderful thing because first of all I can point to something, I can anchor my day with something that I do consistently cause I don’t have many other things that I can put in that category.
Brad: 46:15 I’m a self employed so I don’t have to go and punch in at eight o’clock every single day and many of those other things that kind of form a framework of life and help set us up for success being consistent. So yeah, it’s been great. And also just as I said about the micro workouts, this flexibility, mobility, routine raises the platform from which I launch all other fitness ambitions greatly reducing my injury risk. Another thing that’s really wonderful about it is it helps me wake up. So if I’m feeling like a drag ass in the morning, which sometimes I am because I have the wussy boy mentality leftover from my triathlon days when I was obsessed with sleep and got a ton of it and now it’s like, Oh, did I get enough sleep? Oh I’m not sure. Uh, as soon as I get up and get on the ground, yeah, the blood starts flowing and you start waking yourself up in the most natural and effective way possible.
Brad: 47:06 Better than a caffeinated beverage, I’m gonna say. And I’ve also added as a little side note, uh, the juve light exposure at the same time. So I blast my little portable juve go red light therapy right into my eyes. I put it really close to my eyes cause I want to get into that SCN that super Chi asthmatic nucleus, send my brain a message, a, my hypothalamus, a message that it’s time to start releasing the hormones that give us the awakening, the energizing experience in the morning, the rise of cortisol and serotonin. So if that doesn’t happen on cue for you every single day, if you don’t wake up refreshed and energized with a dance in your step in a sing song in your voice, well the red light therapy has really helped me. It’s really fun and interesting. I just did an Instagram post about that and there’s definitely something to it.
Brad: 47:53 There’s tons of research on red light therapy, how that helps you align with your circadian rhythm. So my morning routine is now doing the crazy legs, things that you see on YouTube and also blasting my face with red light during the effort. Okay. And then the way I end the morning routine is with this yoga bridge move, which is extremely difficult. It’s taken me many years to acclimate, uh, my muscles especially, uh, the flexibility in the lower and upper back to be able to hold this bridge for a total of 40 breath counts. So doing something that difficult to start my day and then proceeding into something even more difficult, arguably my cold plunge, uh, feels like I’m already set up for a badass mentality. Bad-ass mindset as soon as I wake up. So I kinda like that and that brings me to number six and Oh so exciting. We will cover items six through 10 and also my needs to improve list and a second show on the same topic. So thanks for listening to one through five. We’re going to put it all together. Stay tuned on the get over yourself podcast.
Brad: 49:03 Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback@getoveryourselfpodcastatgmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars. And it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves cause they need to. Thanks for doing it.
