Give Yourself Physical Homework

Kids move all the time. We were all kids once. I was a kid once.

Growing up I had lots of P.E. and later I added sports in high school. That means both P.E. and sports. Since football required lifting, that's where I fell in love with weightlifting.

In college, I continued to lift, but I kept doing other things as well. After I got done lifting, there were 4 basketball courts in the gym, so my friends and I would go play some pickup. If we were bored on weekends, we'd do bodyweight only workouts. I did a few intramural sports. This was all on top of the tons of walking I did every day back and forth from my classes to my dorm.

After I graduated?

I lifted…and that's about it.

Lo and behold I ballooned up in weight.

Lifting is awesome, but as we get older, some people think it's the holy grail and that's all we do. Is the body meant to push it hard for 1-2 hours out of our day and sit for the rest? No.

So in an attempt to change this, I'd try to cut back my calories. That does work, but there are times when you can only go so low. Your hormones don't like nibbling like a rabbit for long periods of time.

Who has the opposite problem?

Kids.

They seem to eat a lot…or at least until they don't want to any more. Or they're so busy with play and movement they don't have time to think about it. There's a lesson in there: we get snacky when we're bored.

But we're not here to talk about nutrition. We're here to talk about movement. Constant movement keeps you limber, young, aids your performance in the gym and maybe, just maybe, keeps you lean.

The solution is to just train like a farmer.

Just Keep Moving

There were a few moments in my life where I got lean and stayed lean on accident.

As a kid it's obvious. Lots of movement. Lots of playing. Lots of sprinting for no reason. Video games got a hold of me in middle school, but then luckily high school football took care of that. I didn't have the time to play on top of practice and homework.

Training for football was a year round fitness macro cycle:

• Lift heavy and run/sprint in the summers.

• Focus on football only (running, sprinting, hitting, drills) in the early fall through the season.

• Winter break from school where we took it easy (but went stir crazy and still did something).

• Weightlifting team during the winter.

• More lifting and running in the spring before spring football.

• Spring football (running, sprinting, hitting, drills again).

• Rest a few weeks in the summer, where I'd probably do pushups and run to stay in shape.

• Repeat.

During these football blocks, not a weight was touched. We didn't even try in-season lifting until my senior year. Magically, my lifts never dropped down to 50% after taking months off from lifting.

College was more of the same:

• My main focus was Olympic weightlifting.

• Did other bro split training when I wanted

• Lots of pushups, dips, pullups

• Pickup basketball. Intramural soccer. Volleyball with friends.

• Walking…lots and lots of walking.

A few years back, I heard about 75 hard. After trial and error and self experimentation, in an effort to not make the outdoor workout so hard, I decided to just walk or ruck (which is walking with a weighted backpack). Here's how my schedule looked then.

• Morning: lifting 3x per week. Kettlebell swings and mobility on the other days

• Afternoon: 45 minute walk outside

This easily put me at 10k steps per day. I was usually getting 9k steps by the time my mid-day walk was done.

Lessons from History

Modern people don't move enough.

Ancient people had no choice but to move all day long.

We don't even have to go that far back in history. What if it was 100 years ago? Especially if it was 200 years ago. Not everyone had a car. You had to walk everywhere. Maybe you had some land or a farm so you could get food straight from nature. Then you had to prepare it. Want to go to town? Had to walk. Want to socialize? You either had your family or had to walk to your neighbors.

I believe staying lean back then was because of two things: the food was real (making it hard to over eat) and the movement was constant. Again, having to move all day removes the longing to snack randomly. You're either not around food because you're not near a kitchen, or you're so busy that you forget about food.

Staying mobile was another advantage. We all know the feeling of "getting some air" by going out for a walk. You get fresh air. You get sunlight. You get movement. All of this energizes you. You know what doesn't? Being idle. Even if you have valiant efforts and lift a few days per week, your body craves constant motion. You're not reserving energy by sitting on the couch for 48-72 hours waiting on the next squat session. You're losing it.

You get stale. You get stiff. Do some yoga or a moderate stretching session and compare how you feel after. Not just your body, but brain. It feels good. Want to recover faster? Move more often.

Farmer Training

There is a term called "old man strength." It's when you go on a date with a girl, meet her dad, give him a handshake and it crushes your hand into dust.

But wait, the dude can't even bench 300lbs, and I can. What gives?

Sometimes strength, or what we think it is, is counterintuitive. How does that old man strength come about? From years of constant, low intensity movement. Have to pick up a 20lbs bag? It's not too bad. Have to do it for 4 hours straight? It becomes a different animal. It's the factory workers, the lumberjacks, the car mechanics, the movers. It's the people who have to do something, probably at a low intensity, all day long. Modern life has its benefits, but keeping your body strong and able isn't one of them. It's up to us.

It's time to get your old man strength back.

Here's how to do it.

Step 1: Brainstorm

• Write out what you need. I can give suggestions, but what you need to do is up to you. Walking is nice, but if you don't have a way to make 10k steps per day work, then don't worry about it. Do you need to stretch? Squat? Walk? Hang? Write it down.

Step 2: Strength Training First

• I'm firm believer of strength training, so schedule those in. Set them in stone.

• One could argue that everything we're about to talk about is strength training, but for this section, just think of the "stuff I'd do in the gym" strength training.

Step 3: Fill in the Gaps

• Fill in the rest of the time with what you need. What do you pick? It's the things you can't do too much of. I'll give some suggestions.

• Stretching

• Holding the squat position for 10 minutes per day

• Getting in 10k steps per day (or double it if your average steps are low)

• Walk around the office every 50 minutes.

• Get a standing desk…and use it.

• Hanging from a bar (so you can get your firm handshake back)

• Doing anything from Original Strength

• The Trifecta (L-sits, twist and bridges) from Convict Conditioning 2

• This is your default activity now when you're bored. Get up and walk, stretch. Squat down when scrolling through your phone. Squat down while watching TV. Watch TV while lying on your tummy like you did when you were a kid. Find any excuse to get more walks in through the day.

Step 4: TODO List

• We have a tendency to just forget stuff. Take your list and write it in as a TODO list for your day.

• When your write it down, you increase your chances of doing it because you don't want to feel like a jerk for not doing it.

Step 5: The Mindset

• We're humans, yes, but we're still animals. We thrive on movement. You feel better after going outside for a walk. You feel better after dancing. Your body needs to move. Accept it, because it's true.

• I know this is true because what's the opposite? Sitting on an airplane for hours on end. No one felt like a champion after that.

Lessons from Matt Furey

Out of curiosity, I recently re-skimmed through "Combat Conditioning" by Matt Furey. I got that book ages ago. It was one of my first internet purchases. Matt Furey is a legend. His main thing was martial arts, so the exercises are geared towards getting in condition for combat (if you couldn't tell).

After listing out all of the exercises in his book, he finally goes into the "programming." What he said was a great reminder, and something I had lost for myself:

Wow. He didn't pull any punches.

Yet I've made the mistake of this way of thinking myself. "Squat, bench and deadlift are all you need!" "The Olympics lifts are the best thing you can do for athleticism." But why? If you can pull 500lbs from the ground but can't play on the ground with your kids because you're too stiff, what's the point?

Be integrated.

Do both.

The more you move, the better you'll feel.

The better you feel, the better you move.

Try it out.

Thanks for reading! As always if you have any questions feel free to respond to this newsletter.