Category: Makes You Think

This category covers things that relate probably require some reflection and some time to allow your brain to process more completely. It will be the largest category because the aim of this site is to get people to shift their thinking in some way and to create a new “normal” state. It is safe to say that any post that is included in this category will probably present you with a new piece of information, a new way of looking at something, or a different take on what is already considered common sense or common knowledge.

Steady-State Cardio IS Keeping You Fat

Let me start off by saying that the above statement does not necessarily apply to everyone but if you do a lot of cardio and can’t seem to drop those pounds, you may want to consider it.

The statement is based on a few facts:

  1. The body adapts to exercise very quickly by becoming more efficient to the physical demands – if you do the same workout two times in a row your body will be about 20% more efficient the second time.
  2. The body adapts to the energy system demands of a workout very quickly meaning that it will be more efficient at delivering the energy needed to perform the same workout next time.
  3. The body overcompensates to the demands of a workout to ensure that there is more than enough strength and energy to get it through the same workout next time.

Here is the problem with steady-state cardio as it deals with long term fat loss – your body is so good at adjusting to any repeating physical demands that there is a diminishing marginal caloric-cost to each workout. When you are working in the fat burning zone (between 50-65% of your heart rate max), your body adjusts to these workouts to ensure that there is enough energy to fuel them. Given that they rely more on fat utilization for fuel, the body adapts by increasing the amount of fat that is available. The consequence to this adaption is an increase in fat storage.

This isn’t a big deal initially as you are able to increase the amount of work that you do to stay ahead of the increased energy (fat) storage but at some point very early on, the body catches up and begins to store more fat than you are able to burn off (remember 1 and 2 above). At this point, steady-state cardio stops having a fat loss effect and starts having a fat maintaining effect. When one will achieve this point depends on a number of factors but I would estimate that most people will achieve it after about 2-3 months.

Examples would include the over-weight aerobics instructor, marathon runner or tri-athlete because these individuals spend a lot of time with elevated heart rates and have adapted to the physical demands of the activity. While their cardiovascular health is superb, their body rely so heavily on fat metabolism for energy that they store fat very effectively to allow for the sustained effort that their sports demand.

Long-term fat loss is best achieved through resistance and strength training to increase lean muscle mass, and moderate amounts of high intensity interval training (HIIT) to tax all energy systems. HIIT is best described as periods of increasing work effort followed by recovery phases. A good HIIT workout will see you heart rate modulate between 60% of you max to 95% of your max but will never stay at one level for more than a few minutes.

The Conversation About Children

Over the years I have gotten into it with a lot of parents about my desire to not have children. The conversations all go pretty much the same. They ask me when I am going to start a family and when I tell them that I don’t want to start a family they tell me that I am being selfish.

When I was younger I thought that their comment was a slag on me, that I was somehow less of a human being because I had thought about the consequences of having children and made the decision that it wasn’t something that I wanted. As I get older and start to see the first wave of divorces in my peer group, I feel more comfortable with my stance. It is also very clear that any person who tells me that I am selfish for not having children has either found the right partner, has always wanted kids or is trying to justify their own child creating actions by getting others to do the same.

If you have the right partner, the desire to be a parent and the resources to afford it go ahead and start a family. If you are missing one of these three things, don’t.

First off, individuals of our species are able to effectively cold read a lack of love between two people. When you have children with the wrong person, the child is able to pick up on it and will learn this to be the normal dynamic between two people. This lesson will be carried with them into adulthood and may lead them to choose partners that help them to facilitate the same loveless experience.

If you end up getting divorced, the lives of your children become more difficult. There is plenty of research out there indicating the single parent families can result in well adjusted children, often better adjusted than children in a loveless two parent household, but there is also the undeniable finding that the environment changes in a way that eliminates many of the advantages of a loving two parent household.

Next, if you do not want children but end up having them, you better be able to want them unconditionally because they will pick up any feelings of contempt. Contempt is very much like the universal emotion disgust that all human beings are capable of feeling and reading on other peoples faces. To develop optimally, children need unconditional support and love from their primary care givers. Feelings of contempt immediately add conditions of behavior to the feeling of love that children may not be able to satisfy. While it may be appropriate for you to expect your partner to not find a frenzied excitement at the sound of pots banging together, this expectation is not going to be met when your 2 year old realizes that they can control the sounds in their environment by hitting two things together. You need to be proud of their discoveries and be very accepting of the fact that a young persons lessons about the world are often very destructive and disruptive.

Finally, while money is not necessarily a critical component in child rearing, having it does make life easier. The most highly taxed demographic in society tends to be that of the young family. (Okay, this isn’t entirely accurate, but young families need to spend more than child-free two person income households so a larger percentage of their after-tax income is already accounted for). The more money you have, the easier it will be to provide all the necessities and privilege that help to shape a well adjusted youngster. Having money will also allow you to maintain some of the quality of experience that you enjoyed before starting a family. Having children will shift your priorities, but having children shouldn’t mean the end of all the things you love doing. But it could if you don’t have the funds and have to choose between your gym membership or baby formula.

Given that the consequences for having children are life long, people should be spending as much time considering this decision as they spend thinking about their retirement. Buy accessories on an impulse if you like but plan your family and know what you are getting into before you begin.

No Standard Process? Make Your Own And Follow It

For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed life more when there is a level of predictability to the things I do frequently. I will put up with some very annoying behaviours and patterns providing I have had enough time to get used to them. For example, I know that I’m going to be standing in line when I go to the bank to make my student loan payment each month, I know that I’m better off using the cashier instead of the self-serve check-out when I’m buying produce at the local Real Canadian Superstore and I am certain that the QEW east bound is going to be really slow when I leave work before 5 PM on Friday’s. These are things I’m certain of because I have experienced them often enough to figure-out their pattern and I find them very low stress because I am prepared for them.

Up until very recently I would find myself getting annoyed when there was a change to one of these patterns. Probably the biggest source of this type of frustration has been the check-in procedure the front desk of any GoodLife fitness clubs other than the Milton coed club where I work; my card will only open the gate at the Milton club because GL’s check-in system cannot immediately check you in if you are a member of a different GL club, so when I go to Burlington and scan my card, nothing happens and the gate does not open.

I know the gate won’t open so that doesn’t cause me the frustration. What I used to find annoying is the lack of consistency in the check-in process between the different clubs. At some they smile and open the gate, at others they take you card and open the gate and at others they ask you to write down your name, membership number and the time of day on a check-in sheet before taking your card and letting you in. The other option is they look at you with suspicion, take your card and check your member number in the system, then ask for ID and then get you to fill out the check-in sheet. I am willing to follow any one of these procedures every time I visit but I don’t understand why it varies between clubs and even between individuals at the same club.

A few weeks ago I was walking down the stairs at the Oakville club thinking about what was about to happen and a realization hit me. What was frustrating me was the absence of predictability and the feelings of helplessness I had when I go to check in – no matter what I think is about to happen, there is a very good chance that I am going to be wrong and the front desk person is going to have me jump through a different set of hoops. I identified, that if I knew before hand what was about to happen, it wouldn’t be an unpleasant experience for me, it would just be something I do. So I grabbed the sign-in sheet, filled in the required information, handed over my membership card, showed them my drivers licence, smiled and said “hello”. They unlocked the gate and I went in. I wasn’t asked to do anything else because I had already done everything they could have wanted me to do. It was a small thing, but I had moved the locus of control back to me and removed that helpless “what is about to happen to me” feeling that the process normal facilitated.

Since then I have carried this lesson over to a number of different areas in my life. At home, I expect that I’ll be making the bed in the morning, taking out the garbage and washing the dishes before I go to work instead of wondering whether or not Rachel will or thinking about the possible reasons why she didn’t. At the gym, I assume that there is going to be someone using the squat rack for biceps curls so I don’t consider doing squats until I am loading the weight onto the bar.

I have started to uncover the things that annoy me and I am modifying my behaviour to ensure that I control what ends up happening as often as possible. I determine what needs to happen and then make the process or procedure that I follow consistently so I don’t give others the opportunity to determine my behaviour. Doing this has dramatically reduced the amount of stress that I experience and it has returned a lot of joy to things that I was beginning to find somewhat painful.

Things are predictable because I make them predictable.

New Challenges – Moving In With Rachel – Month 2

As October begins I am excited about starting my third month of living with Rachel. School started again in September and I started a new job, so our lives are very different than what they were when we first met and started growing our lives together.

Here are the things I learned during our second month living together:

1) Don’t waste a moment. Rachel started school and I started a new job so we need to make the best of the 10 minutes a day we see each other.

2) When making a meal that requires some effort, make enough for two. If Rachel doesn’t end up eating it, there’s a meal for me that I don’t have to make. But she’s usually happy to have something to eat that doesn’t take much time to get ready.

3) There is tomorrow. If I think I have an issue and it’s fairly late in the evening, I’ll just sleep on it. If it is actually important it will come up again the next day when my mind is more clear and I’m thinking better. If it doesn’t come up again then it would have been pointless to raise it in the first place.

4) Take out the garbage. Not taking it out doesn’t make you the winner, it makes the place stink.

5) Change your eating habits to eat the things the other likes cooking and eating. I don’t like onions but Rachel does so that means I do. End of story.

Check out New Challenges – Moving In With Rachel – Month 1 for the first part.

Waiting For Death On The Gardiner Expressway

On Friday I went to see Deb to hang out, chat and have a few drinks. This doesn’t cause any problems with Rachel and I because Rachel has to work in Toronto at 11:30 PM until 7:30 AM. I got to Debs around 9:30 and cracked my first beer of the weekend.

I left my phone off because it is pay as you go and I wasn’t expecting to hear from Rachel until around midnight when she would text me to say good night and to let me know that she had gotten to work safely. I turned my phone on around 11:58 PM and my night changed.

Text messages began to stream in:

11:14 PM – Rachel – On my way love

11:45 PM – Rachel – help

11:51 PM – Rachel – help please

11:56 PM – Rachel – Please Patrick help

I call her at 12 AM and she answers her cell home in a frantic state. “I’m at the side of the Gardner and someone has hit my car. The cops have just shown up. I’m okay but I’m going to the hospital.” I’ve never heard her this freaked out.

She is directly above Cherry Street on the East bound Gardiner Expressway with a flat tire. She had been struck there for about 25 minutes waiting for the police to arrive. Take a look at the google map, she was stopped right were that red car is. Now follow the road back about 50 metres and realize that the red car is not visible to anyone in the right hand lane before this point. For almost 20 minutes she sat there stuck in her car waiting for the police hoping that someone would not rear end her. She said cars were skidding and swerving to avoid her because they had less than 50 metres to react. She figured she was going to die and called her folks to say goodbye and tried desperately to get in touch with me so we could have one last conversation.

She got hit around 11:58 by someone who wasn’t able to get out of the lane. Fortunately for both of them, they were able to slow down enough so as to just lightly crash into the back of her. The police showed up a few minutes later and started directing traffic around them so a tow truck could pull them out of harms way – for $200 she was pulled about 1.5 Km off the highway to the ESSO gas station on Lakeshore.

The whole thing left her very shaken in a way I cannot relate to. I’ve had accidents before, I destroyed my second car on the south bound 427 on Monday morning but the accident was over in about 3 seconds and all lanes of traffic stopped. I was pulled off the road without fearing a secondary impact. I KNEW it was over as soon as I looked up to see all the other cars waiting for me get out of their way. Her termoil lasted for about 25 minutes while she sat there completely helpless waiting to get rear ended. The Gardiner Expressway does not have any shoulder because it is a raised highway, a product of a younger Toronto when the population was low enough to support that type of thing. Long since becoming dated, there is no way off of it other than driving to an off ramp or jumping 40 feet to the ground. She faced certain death by jumping or the possibility of death by staying with the car. I would have made the same choice, but it removes any illusion of control that you may have.

She is uninjured and the car is a little damaged. She’s grateful to be alive because someone died at the same sport last year under exactly the same circumstances. I’m not sure what the lesson is in all of this other than try to get to a place where you will be seen if you need to stop on the Gardiner. But when you are driving on the rim and the car is grinding to a stop, you are left with very little choice other than to stay put and make those “thank you and goodbye” calls people make when they have time to think about the fact that they are going to be dead very soon.

Cutting Back On Frequency And Volume

It is the end of racing season so I have cut back on the frequency (2 workout per week vs. 7 or more) and volume (3-5 sets per body part vs. 10-15) of my resistance and strength training this summer and some unusual things have started to happen.

1) I gain body fat much easier. It’s a relative thing because I’m still very lean but if I’m not careful with what I eat, I gain weight. I can have very few cheat days. The reason this is happening is because the amount of work I’m doing is dramatically reduced. While my calorie output is probably a little higher because I am riding so much, the long term recovery cost of bike riding is a lot lower than what it is for weight training because the amount of micro damage caused to the muscle fibers is much lower.

2) I get delayed onset muscle soreness after almost every workout, and particularly in my traps. This one is weird because I used to do 2 or 3 high volume trap workouts per week and I rarely felt anything more than a pump.

3) I’m enjoying the movements more, but liking going to the gym less. I guess it’s a mode thing because during my last bulk, I LOVED going to workout 2 or 3 times a day. Now I kind of dread it, until I get there.

4) I pay a lot less attention to the people around me and find focusing on the workout very easy. It is as though I am alone in a crowded gym.

5) The speed on my movements has increased. I still keep the lowering phase controlled, but the lifting portion of the movements is a lot more explosive.

6) I’m sleeping a lot better. I used to go to bed exhaused and wake up a lot, now I’m sleeping right through most nights. I’m also waking up faster in the morning and able to engage the world effectively within minutes of waking instead of dragging my butt around the house until the first couple of coffees take hold.

New Challenges – Moving In With Rachel – Month 1

Rachel and I decided to move in together and we found ourselves a small bachelor apartment in Oakville. If you have never lived with a partner before, here are some of the things that I’ve learned about it in the first month.

1) We are different people and each have a unique experience of reality. We view the world in different terms because we have different DNA and have had different experiences. Neither is right or wrong and both are equally valid.

2) Clearly define your expectations and responsibilities in the house work, finances and behaviour. Make a list of chores and pick the ones you like. Make a list of bills, due dates, amounts required from each person and the date they are due. Tell the other what type of morning person you are, how you start and wrap up your day, how you unwind when you get home and what type of stuff makes your life easier.

3) The toilet seat is not to remain up EVER.

4) Ask for what you need when you need it. “Please help me with these dishes, I need your help making the bed.” Seems so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said but I found myself wondering why Rachel was trying to bug me by leaving a wet towel on the bed after her shower. Turns out that she had no idea that she was doing it and has stopped since I asked her not to.

5) The right way to do something is the way you do it, so when you don’t agree on what the right way to do something is, do it either way because both work.

6) Call them on their crap immediately and make sure they do the same with your crap.

7) When you give them feedback (are trying to get them to alter their behaviour a little) always let them know how you felt. It places the responsibilty on you for feeling the particalar way and it increases the likelihood that they’ll remain open because they will not feel attacked.

8) Choose your battles and compromise on the things that truely do not matter to you.

9) Some behaviours won’t change so if you can do it in 5 seconds, consider that an option before talking to them about it again.

8 Mistakes I see In The Gym Everyday

I’ve spend a lot of time at the gym over the last few years and I’ve noticed a few things that people do frequently that hinder their progress. The follow are 8 of the simplest to fix:

1) Lifting the weight not lifting the lift. I have no problem with power lifters using whatever means necessary to get the weight up, their sport is lifting as much weight as possible and there is a special technique to it, one that is very different from a fitness or body building lift. But this type of lifting isn’t the most effective way to get fit or grow muscle. In fact, they do whatever they can to make lifting that weight as easy as possible, the opposite of what body builders and fitness participants should be doing. If you are working a leg exercise and your shoulders are hurting, take some weight off so you are able to feel the effort in your legs.

2) Not working out very hard. Intensity is key to getting quick results at the gym. It’s fine to be social while you’re there, just try your best to keep your heart rate and effort up. If you do more talking than lifting, consider finding somewhere else to hang out.

3) Avoiding power lifting movements. Power lifting moves are great for teaching you how to control your nervous system and coordinate the impulses needed to fire almost all of the muscle fibers in a muscle. In fact, you’re not likely to be able to learn this any other way. Lots of practice can teach you how to fire them but going down that avenue is going to take years vs. months. It is irrelevant that their isn’t a direct carryover from power cleans to pull-ups, because the portion of the brain that controls and coordinates high levels of muscle recruitment is going to develop from power cleans which is going to make pull-ups easier.

4) Working a very short portion of a lifts range of motion. Unless you have an injury, warm-up well and perform the entire range of motion with EVERY lift; I’ll give you a shorter range on the last unspotted rep of a heavy set, but that’s it. Lowering 80 pound dumbbells to elbows at 90 degrees and pressing them up again is exactly 50% of a rep. Would you come 50% of the way to the gym for your workout? I’ve seen people “press” 225 of 5 reps like this – you can tell who these people are because their chests are tight and their shoulders are rounded forward when they walk through the gym looking to see who saw them perform their killer set. The other great example of this behaviour is the 1/8th leg press when the person loads the machine with every plate in the gym and moves it 3 inches. At least in this case, if they load and unload the machine themselves, they are getting a decent workout.

5) Coming to the gym instead of getting another hobby. There is a limit to how much you can workout and still continue to grow. You’ll continue to burn calories the more you work, but there is a finite amount of micro-damage that you can do to your body before you start running into problems or stop being able to lift with enough intensity to do any damage. You’ve done way too much a few set BEFORE this point. While you will keep growing, you’ll not be growing as fast as you could be had you performed just enough work.

6) Not having any goals, long, short or immediate. Sometimes when I ask people what they are hoping to achieve by being at the gym they know right away and tell me, I want to lose some weight and build some muscle, I want to look good at the cottage this summer, I like the way it feels when or after I workout,… But a lot of the time, people don’t know why they are there. They’re doing the same exercises the same way and with the same weight that they always do and getting exactly the same thing out of it as they always do. When your sole reason for being there inertia, it maybe time to talk to a trainer about some goals.

7) Not trying anything new. Most people hate telling me what their favorite exercise is that they started doing in the last 6 weeks. For me it would be overhead barbell shrugs. The 6 weeks before that it would have been single arm corner barbell press and before that it would have been the agility ladder. Wide grip dead lifts on a step, glut-ham raises, front squats and, for a time, upper-pec cable crossovers would have been mentioned. The workouts I do now have some of the same core compound exercises as the ones I did a year ago, but a lot of the other exercises have been replaced with new ones. My strength on most lifts has improved marginally in that year but given that there are about 15 or 20 new lifts included in that, I believe I have progressed. Irrelevant of the numbers, my body looks better than it did a year ago because the new movements have added mass in places that were not getting worked before.

8) Never thinking about why you are doing what you are doing. I don’t mean goals here, I mean things like not questioning the wisdom of why you don’t go all the way to the ground with squats, why fat makes you fat, why you will never grow on a reduced or low carbohydrate diet, why machines are not as good as free weights or why doing cardio will stop you from growing. There are 1000’s of these pieces of wisdom out there that have been repeated so much that they are now assumed to be facts. Just question yourself every now and then to determine why your are doing what you are doing

“Do it for me”

I found the following quote. It is a slight paraphrasing of the original that appears in Bill Phillips’ Body For Life, a fantastic and important book.

Jamie & Barry were brothers. One day Barry dove into a lake, hit a rock & broke his neck, paralyzing him from the neck down. “It was a tragic accident that, as you might imagine, has taken a lot of healing to cope with. Jamie explained to me that one day he was talking with Barry about the difficulty he was experiencing trying to get in shape. He told his brother, ‘I can’t stand running on the treadmill or lifting weights. I just hate it!’ To which Barry responded, ‘Jamie, I’d give anything in the world to run on a treadmill. I’d give anything in the world to flex the muscles in my legs–to feel my arms getting stronger–to feel them move. I’d give anything to have the CHOICE that you have–to move, to lift, to run…but I don’t have that choice. If you won’t do it for yourself, Jamie, do it for me.’ Jamie was speechless. He told me he never felt so selfish in his life. How could he complain to his brother, who can’t even raise his hand, that exercising is an inconvenience, that moving the body is a ‘pain’? Jamie told me that was the turning point for him, and he has never missed a workout since.”

If we are lucky to have the choice to do it, what are we when me make the choice not to?

I Didn’t Earn This Privilege

The world can be a hard and tough place, but not so much here. There’s a good chance that if you are reading this you are one of the lucky few on the planet who have it good, who have it really good. Look around you and consider all that you have. You’re sitting on a chair in a room in front of your computer. You have enough time to be on the Internet reading NON-ESSENTIAL information, you’re not stuck working in a factory, living in a slum eating barely enough food to keep your body going and drinking water that comes from a stream that doubles as a toilet.

You have it really good by virtue of where you were born. Even the poorest person in your region has it better than most of the worlds population because social services exist to ensure that those born in a privileged country do not go hungry, without clothes or without human rights. And if you are willing to work, you have the opportunity to do really well and make enough money to buy nice things and improve your standard of living. All because of where you were born.

I forget this often and my brother is very good at reminding me that most of the opportunities I have living in Canada are a result of living in Canada and have very little to do with me as a person. I am not innately deserving of privilege, I was born into it; or more accurately, I wasn’t born into poverty and a complete lack of opportunity. It didn’t have anything to do with me. I am no more deserving of anything than anyone else on the planet yet I get to eat good food and sleep soundly while billions of others go without because of where they were born.

I didn’t earn any of it.