The Fit Ethos

The Mindset You Need To Take Control Of Your Health

The internet is flooded with health and fitness tips. You can’t escape it. It’s everywhere. The fitness industry is a 30 billion dollar industry. Search for a new diet or exercise plan, and thousands will come funneling into your computer.

But none of it will help you.

In fact, nothing will help you unless you change your mindset. It’s the root of all behavior change and what drives every one of your decisions, and this particular mindset will help you take control of your health:

5 Tips To Quickly Get Over Jet Lag

Jet lag is awful. I’m writing this at 5am after returning to California from Japan. Yesterday I woke up at noon. This morning I woke up at 3am and couldn’t fall back asleep.

Jet lag typically hits hardest when you travel east and cross two or more timezones. The resulting chaos on your circadian rhythm can wreak havoc on your health and routine, especially if you need to return to work quickly after traveling.

Thankfully, there are ways to quickly mitigate the effects of jet lag and getting your circadian rhythm back on track.

The Secret To Longevity: Living a Long and Fulfilled Life

We see these trends everyday. Do this everyday to live longer. The one exercise to ensure your longevity. The one habit to a healthier life. This is the secret to live a long and fulfilled life…

And I get it. Reducing everything down to a single habit or product to ensure our health and longevity is an attractive proposition, but most of these people are just trying to sell something or drive more views to their website.

While I can say that the secret is that there is no single secret, I won’t. We already know from extensive investigations into the Blue Zones of the world that longevity comes down to numerous factors such as nutrition, physical activity, community, and many more.

However, there is one thing that seems to be repeating theme everywhere.

Why do you live?

One of the crucial factors of longevity and satisfaction with quality of life is purpose. Why are you alive? Do you feel like your life has meaning?

This was largely an unsatisfying answer for doctors and scientists for a long time. How is it that something as simple and abstract as life’s purpose can be more important than something like medication? After years of study, there isn’t much argument against this.

Study after study shows that outcomes in nursing homes and assisted living facilities significantly improve when the residents feel like they have a purpose for living.

Think about it. As we grow older and more frail, our independence seems to get taken away from us. This is a common pattern. As our memory fades and our physical abilities lessen, our locus of control contracts. Once safety seems to be compromised our home, privacy, possessions, and purpose get stripped of us as we are placed into the care of an institution.

This isn’t without wholesome intent. We care about our elders, which is why safety is such a paramount concern. However, this makes the sunset years of our lives completely devoid of meaning.

Why do you live? Why do you wake up every morning? A notable study once showed that simply giving a nursing home resident the responsibility of keeping a plant alive can have significant positive impacts on their quality of life.

Lessons from the Blue Zones

For those unfamiliar, blue zones are areas in the world with unusually high concentrations of individuals who live past 100.

Numerous studies have been conducted in these regions to find the “secret” to their longevity. The mistake was that their focus was too narrow. They tried looking for the hidden formula for nutrition or the holy grail of exercise programs. It turns out that there is a large cluster of factors that contribute to their longevity and wellness.

This supercharged wellness extended far beyond the physical. These people were much happier and fulfilled than most around the world. We can easily replicate nutrition and exercise, yet results did not seem to translate very effectively. So what was missing?

Delving deeper into the common themes of these regions, almost every elder in these regions maintained a purpose and meaning for their life. Whether that meant they had a hobby, family, job, or engaged in their community, these people still had a reason to wake up and get out of bed each day.

A lifeless atmosphere

Think about it. If all it took to live a long and fulfilled life was to make sure that our meat suit was well taken care of, longevity would not be a mystery. Imagine a life where your daily living was reduced to eating a square meal, staying hydrated, exercising, and taking medication. Your bed time and wake up time is strictly regulated. You’re prohibited from engaging in anything remotely risky. You no longer have any privacy and can’t even lock the door to your residence.

You only get to keep what can fit into a small dresser and cubby. Entertainment and recreation is determined by a committee that only has a small interest in what you’re interested in. You’re not even sure if you like the people you’re surrounded by.

How long would you last here?

When purpose and meaning are stripped away from our lives, our lives have no meaning. These folks tend to do very poorly in their elder years.

Dr. Bill Thomas came up with a simple but elegant solution: inject life into the lifeless atmosphere of nursing homes. He transformed the entire culture of a nursing home by bringing animals, living plants, a garden, and children into the facility. The change was staggering. The residents who never socialized with anyone started to speak. They volunteered to care for the animals. It seemed as if they had come back to life.

The important part is to not get confused with the deeper principle. It wasn’t that the place became more fun (although we have to admit, that is probably part of it). These residents were given a purpose for their daily life.

Live a life of meaning

This is easier said than done, especially in one’s later years. Most of us have some sort of purpose in our daily lives whether that is a career, caring for family, personal projects, side hustles, or even getting together with friends to engage in a shared hobby.

The secret that we need to put forth more effort into implementing is making sure we don’t strip our elders of their purpose and independence. This can be as simple as letting them stay in their own home. Allow them to engage in hobbies with their community. Let them go to church. Listen, and let them lead their lives.

The Best Workout Split Used By Most Athletes

Workout splits are essentially how you divide and organize a strength training program. What are you going to do each time you go to the gym? How often are you training each muscle group? What’s the best workout split?

There is a lot to consider.

There are an endless number of workout splits from bodybuilding-style splits that emphasize a specific muscle group per day to those that emphasize movements such as push, pull, squat, and hinge. Trainers and coaches will swear by one while slandering others.

Each split has its merits and advantages but there is anything you take from this post, it’s to just stick with one for long enough to make progress instead of hopping from one program to the next every week.

But let’s get to the one favored by athletes.

Mobility vs Stability in Strength and Fitness

People will often get caught up in the difference between mobility vs stability. They’ve become buzzwords in the fitness community, and if you’re not addressing them, then it may feel like something is being neglected.

But what on earth is mobility and what is stability? Most fitness coaches and trainers have a hard time differentiating the two and when they can, they have a hard time explaining why its so important to address.

So if these health nuts can’t even define these two concepts… Why is everyone so obsessed with them?

Let’s take some time to define mobility vs stability and explore the importance of each.

Mobility

Mobility is simply your ability to move.

In the most broad sense, it is an individual’s ability to move themselves through space. An elderly individual who has difficulty with bed mobility, standing, and walking is said to have compromised mobility. An individual who has no difficulties moving is said to have normal mobility.

In the fitness community, mobility has taken on a much more microscopic context. Mobility has become an individual’s range of motion and ability to attain certain positions for exercise or athletics.

Mobility is both active and passive range of motion, for good or for bad. While it is common to have too little mobility, it is also possible to have too much mobility and cross into the space of instability. This can happen when mobility is obsessively chased while strength is neglected. It’s also possible to have more passive range of motion than you can actively control.

mobility vs stability flexible hypermobility girl

Pathological hypermobility is a relatively rare problem that some individuals suffer from.

Two good examples of instability resulting from genetic disorders are Ehlers Danlos syndrome and Marfans syndrome, often characterized by hypermobility and fragility of connective tissue. These individuals can get injured very easily from seemingly trivial trauma due to the decreased strength of their connective tissues.

While most people will not have to worry about this level of hypermobility, it is a good demonstration that there is a limit to our mobility needs.

When it comes to mobility, you simply just need to ask yourself if you have the requisite ability to move to complete the task at hand.

Stability

Stability in the context of human movement is the ability to stop or control any unwanted movement. If you’re doing an overhead press, you don’t want the bar shaking uncontrollably and swaying in all directions. Your ability to control that excessive and unwanted movement is stability.

There are two types of stability, just like mobility. Active stability is the ability of your muscles to actively control and stop unwanted movement. Passive stability is the inherent stability resulting from structures like ligaments, bones, tendons, fascia, etc. We can appreciate how pathology such as Ehlers Danlos and Marfans can cause a massive lack of passive stability.

Truly pathological instability outside of traumatic injury and disease is very rare. When I hear someone say that they have an “unstable spine”, I always ask questions. True spine instability is a serious problem that most people don’t have. A weak set of abs is not an immediate precursor to an unstable spine.

Now, if you have weak abs and try and do heavy lifting, it may very well become the weak link in your lifting, but it doesn’t mean you’re “unstable”. Heavy exercise inherently requires a greater degree of stability to transmit force and control unwanted movements.

When it comes to stability, you need to ask yourself if you have the requisite strength to control your body and any weight you are moving.

Mobility vs stability: A spectrum of movement

Mobility and stability are not mutually exclusive concepts. You cannot work just one end of the spectrum and expect to perform optimally. I have many friends who are fantastic yoga practitioners who only ever did yoga and had a plethora of shoulder, hip, and back problems. Only once they started to incorporate strength training into their exercise regimen did those problems go away.

Tennis player serve stability vs mobility — Most overhead sports will require a high level of stability

A perfect example of mobility and stability working in tandem is in Olympic style weightlifting. These athletes need tremendous levels of mobility to achieve the requisite positions in the clean and jerk and snatch while having superhuman strength and stability to keep the weight under control.

Gymnasts are another great example. Gymnastics requires high levels of mobility and flexibility as well as stability and strength to perfectly control the athletes bodyweight through space. Have you seen how jacked gymnasts are?

We cannot simply pursue one while neglecting the other. Mobility and stability are equally important for any high level athlete.

A practical way to integrate both

I will always come back to lifting weights. Most people associate strength training with bulky, slow, and immobile individuals. This is far from the truth. Proper technique in weightlifting, powerlifting, and bodybuilding requires high levels of mobility. Simply controlling your way through full ranges of motion during most lifting exercises will improve mobility. Overhead presses require good shoulder mobility. Stiff legged deadlifts require great hamstring flexibility. A full squat incorporates full ranges of motion from the hips, knees, and ankles as well as requiring good shoulder mobility.

If you incorporate a few mobility drill during your warm up, you will have a well-rounded plan that tackles both mobility and stability.

So quit freaking out about spending hours and hours on one and stick with an intelligent plan for fitness. Mobility and stability will naturally be addressed.

The 5 Pillars of Getting Jacked and Fit

Everyone wants to get jacked but no one knows where to put forth their time and energy.

The 80/20 rule remains true for fitness. A vast majority (about 80%) of your gains will come from about 20% of what you do. This means that there are endless gimmicks in the other 80% that will distract you and waste your time. Focus on these 5 high impact pillars of fitness to get the most out of your efforts.

The 5 Pillars of Being Jacked and Fit

I can simplify getting jacked and fit down to 5 things: lift heavy 3-4 times per week, do high intensity conditioning, eat well, sleep well, and manage your stress. If you neglect any one of these things, your results will take a large hit. There are an endless number of extra gimmicks like massage guns, red light therapy, overpriced supplements, cryotherapy, and rolling around on foam tubes to distract you. If you don’t take care of the 5 pillars first, then none of the extra gimmicks will make any difference.

Supplements can be helpful, but not if your nutrition isn’t dialed in.

Massage guns, foam rollers, and cryo can all be helpful, but not if your sleep isn’t taken care of.

And all of the “corrective” exercise in the world won’t help you if you’re not on an intelligently designed training program.

I repeat: a vast majority of your gains and results come from the core behaviors and principles of training, nutrition, and recovery. We need to differentiate that from the fluff.

So let’s dive in.

1. Lift Heavy 3-4 Times Per Week

In order to get strong and jacked, we need to be lifting heavily and focus on the large compound exercises. These include squats, deadlifts, lunge variations, presses, pull ups, and rows.

Compound exercises are more effective than isolation exercises. The big movements are the core of your training program. Curls and triceps extensions are the icing on the cake. You don’t get dessert before your protein.

We should also be lifting heavily. A vast majority of people will make incredible gains lifting within the 5-10 rep range. I will sometimes push that to 10-20 reps for certain phases and exercises, but most of my sets are done between 5-10 reps.

There is no way around progressive overload. If we want our muscles to grow in size or strength, we must be doing more in the future compared to now. This means doing more reps per set, more sets per exercise, or lifting more weight.

Lifting about 2 times per week is the absolute minimum dosage for strength gains, but 3-4 days seems to be the optimal range. I advocate for an upper/lower split. This is how most athletes train.

If you train 3 times per week, your training schedule may look like this:

Monday: Upper Body 1 Bench Press Emphasis
Wednesday: Lower Body 1 Squat Emphasis
Friday: Upper Body 2 Overhead Press Emphasis
Monday: Lower Body 2 Deadlift Emphasis
Wednesday: Upper Body 1 (The cycle begins again)

A 4 day training week may be distributed to Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Or, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

High Intensity Conditioning

Don’t do cardio. Perform conditioning.

Low intensity cardio will only yield disappointment when it comes to performance gains and body recomposition. High intensity interval training and sprint interval training are both vastly superior in terms of performance and fat burning.

We don’t need to look much further than Olympic sprinters to have a visual understanding of this.

High intensity conditioning is more effective and time efficient than low intensity cardio. You can get a good HIIT or SIT session done in 20-30 minutes, whereas it can take up to that amount of time of jogging to even sufficiently reach a fat burning state for some folks.

Here is a good sprint interval training protocol to try:

Complete the following 2 times a week:

Week one: 4x10s, 4 minutes rest between each
Week two: 6x10s, 3 minutes rest between each
Week three: 8x10s, 2 minutes rest between each
Week four: 4x20s, 4 minutes rest between each
Week five: 6x20s, 3 minutes rest between each
Week six: 8x20s, 2 minutes rest between each
Week seven: 4x30s, 4 minutes rest between each
Week eight: 4x30s, 3 minutes rest between each
Week nine: 4x30s, 2 minutes rest between each

Complete the following 3 times a week:

Week ten: 4x30s, 4 minutes rest between each

Dial In Your Nutrition

You must tailor your nutrition towards your goals. If you trying to gain weight, then you need to be in a calorie surplus. If you are trying to lose weight, then you need to be in a calorie deficit. And, if you trying to maintain your weight, you need to be at calorie maintenance. There is no way around this law of thermodynamics.

Gaining or losing 1-2 pounds per week is a healthy start. A pound of fat is about 3500 calories. In order to lose about 1 pound per week, you need to be in a 500 calorie deficit everyday.

Gaining a pound of muscle requires about a 2800 calorie surplus. This means you should be in a 400 calories surplus per day if you are trying to gain weight.

The calorie surplus and deficit are the most reliable metrics of altering body composition. The next most important is macronutrient distribution. This is the ratio of protein, carbs, and fats if your daily diet.

The most important macronutrient to focus on is protein intake as this will help with building muscle during weight gain phases and maintaining muscle during weight loss phases. Once you have protein dialed in, you should focus on taking in more complex carbs than fats, as carbs will provide more readily available energy than fat.

This does not mean to completely eliminate fats! Fats are important for a wide array of functions throughout our body.

If you have your calorie surplus/deficit and macronutrient distribution dialed in, then you will have covered a vast majority of your nutritional needs.

Sleep Like You Mean It

Sleep is the foundation of all health. If you neglect your sleep, then you are essentially throwing away all of your hard work.

I cannot emphasize the importance of sleep. Sleep is usually the first thing that gets neglected when life gets busy and hectic. However, skimping out on sleep will negatively affect literally every aspect of your life. You will notice that you have less energy, are more irritable, make poor food decisions, perform poorly at complex tasks and at the gym, and have reduced vitality overall.

There is a reason why professional athletes obsess over their sleep. It is the foundation of their performance. Sleep is the time that our body repairs itself, the brain literally cleans itself, and balances our hormones.

I have written about the importance of sleep and how to optimize our sleep in previous articles here and here (don’t worry, they open in new tabs).

Here is the gist. You should sleep between 7-9 hours every night (children and teenagers will need more). Get to bed around the same time every night. Make your bedroom as dark, cool, and quiet as possible. Cut out screens and stimulating activities about 3 hours before bed time. Stop caffeine at about 1pm.

Don’t neglect sleep.

Manage Your Stress

This is a big one for the modern world. Our attention and focus are being stolen from us everyday from every direction and our jobs only get more stressful. Responsibilities quickly pile up.

If we don’t do something to manage our sanity, we are heading towards a world of anxiety, panic attacks, and depression.

All of these factors significantly impact our health and well-being. Chronic and high levels of stress will negatively impact our mental health, motivation, hormonal health, sleep, nutrition, and gym performance.

We are all wired to handle stress differently. Some people can manage loads of stress without any negative consequence, and others will fall apart at the slightest derailment of plans.

You must understand your needs and manage your stress or else suffer the negative consequences. Some strategies to help manage stress include meditation, journaling, exercise, sleeping enough, and making time for your passions.

Your life cannot just be your job and responsibilities. You need to make time for your tribe and community. You need to pursue your passions and hobbies. Go outside.

Spend Your Efforts Wisely

We only have so much time during the day. Ensure you are spending your efforts on the right things that will yield the most results.

Lift heavy weights.

Do conditioning.

Dial in your nutrition.

Sleep enough.

Manage your stress.

If you have these 5 pillars in check, then you are off to a good start.

One strange morning habit that helps me stay focused

A morning routine and ritual are mainstays in the self-help and entrepreneur space.

Proponents rave about how successful people always have a morning routine to “win the day” or to get them centered. Make your bed. Coffee. Journal. Express gratitude. Exercise. Read. Meditate.

I get it. Focus is a scarce resource these days. If you’re trying to advance towards your goals, you need to avoid brain fog, being unfocused, and being unmotivated like the plague.

I still have a daily morning routine. I’ve pared it down by quite a bit and I’ll admit, it helps me gain momentum at the beginning of the day. I still drink coffee, meditate, and write in a journal.

But there’s something I do that helps me stay more focused than any amount of meditation or journaling can.

The best exercises to build massive traps

Let’s face it. Big traps are intimidating and cool. They round off a powerful physique. You can’t have a jacked upper body and have deflated upper traps. Massive deltoids look silly when they’re next to tiny traps.

When people think of building their traps, they always think of shrugs. When I ask for any other exercise for their traps they… shrug… Shrugs are great but that’s way too limiting. Here are the best exercises to build massive traps.

You Need a Fitness Journal: The Secret to Strength Gains

If you’ve lifted weights for any amount of time, then you know that progressive overload is the thing you need to be pursuing. This is one of the fundamental tenets of strength. If you don’t lift heavier weights or do more work over time, you will not get stronger.

The Problem

Sounds easy enough. However, when I ask most people what they lifted on any given exercise in the last few days or weeks, they always have a hard time telling me. Not that they need to have their numbers memorized, but they don’t even have something they can reference in order to check their progress.

If you’re squatting 200 pounds for 3 sets of 5 today, you need to be using heavier weights or do more reps/sets next week or month. But if you can’t remember if you were squatting 185 or 225 last, how are you going to make intelligent decisions in the gym?

You can’t.

3 Changes You Will Notice When You Quit Smoking Weed

Popular media has essentially cemented the idea that smoking weed is harmless to the human body and brain. While cannabis does not seem to be as harmful as other illicit drugs, this notion is spoken almost like fact when the body of evidence is scarce.

There is emerging evidence that suggests that there are plenty of detrimental effects of consuming marijuana, including some alarming findings about potential long-term effects on the brains of younger individuals who consume cannabis. The idea that weed cannot be addictive is a lie.

Many individuals will be able to recreationally consume cannabis with minimal effect, much like alcohol. However, chronic and dependent users won’t be so lucky.

If you can find it in yourself to stop, I encourage you to take a break from weed for a few weeks. If you frequently use or compulsively seek cannabis, here are 3 changes you will notice when you quit smoking weed.

Improved Motivation

It is well established that dopamine is the chemical of motivation. While evidence is mixed, marijuana use alters the physiology of dopamine in a way that blunts motivation.

Here’s the quick lowdown on dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical that motivates us towards action of seeking something outside of ourselves. This motivation can be purely for survival instincts such as seeking food, sex, and safety. In the modern world, this seeking behavior can be towards advancing careers, relationships, goals, and, yes, sex. When dopamine is naturally elevated, motivation is high. When dopamine levels are depressed, motivation is low. When dopamine levels suddenly spike to unusually high levels (due to various causes such as happy and exciting moments, large rewards, and, unfortunately, drugs) there will be an inevitable crash to very low levels.

Cannabis has been shown to spike dopamine levels during use. This will lead to the inevitable crash afterwards. Weed isn’t the only substance that does this. Alcohol and illicit drugs will do the same. Chronic use of cannabis has been shown to blunt dopamine activity, meaning long term use will cause reduced dopamine release. With less dopamine comes less motivation.

I don’t believe in the caricature of the lazy stoner, but I have seen many friends go through a noticeable transformation where they become more focused, motivation, and resilient to stress when they quit smoking weed. It’s hard to say if the cessation of cannabis alone directly caused these improvements or if it was a battery of behavioral changes, but if quitting was the impetus for self-improvement, I am fine with that. It’s also possible that these positive changes were due to improvements in other factors such as improved sleep, which brings me to my next point.

Improved Sleep

I have previous addressed the effects of cannabis on sleep in this article.

Many individuals use cannabis as a sleep aid. The ironic part is that weed actually hurts sleep quality.

Two ways that weed hurts your sleep are that it suppresses REM sleep and prevents normal sleep duration.

REM sleep is associated with dreaming and is important for learning, memory, creativity, and processing emotionally turbulent events from the previous day. Cannabis users will dream much less during use, even if it seems like the dreams are more vivid. Disrupting REM sleep will negatively impact our mental acuity and well being.

Cannabis will also prevent normal sleep durations. Adults typically need 7-9 hours of sleep. Cannabis users will typically diverge to sleeping less than 6 hours or more than 10, both of which are associated with poor health outcomes.

When you quit smoking cannabis, your sleep improves. When your sleep improves, everything improves. You will notice that you have more energy throughout the day, less brain fog, less anxiety, and are more adept at dealing with stress.

Less Anxiety

This is a tough one. Many individuals use weed to help with their anxiety. The evidence is hard to sift through, but the emerging picture is becoming more clear.

THC, which is the psychoactive component of cannabis that’s associate with getting high, seems to have an anxiogenic effect, meaning it increases and worsens anxiety, especially at higher doses.

CBD on the other hand, appears to have an anxiolytic effect at all doses, meaning it helps reduce anxiety.

Given that most recreational cannabis users tend to consume marijuana for THC and its psychoactive effects, it’s likely that they are doing no favors for their anxiety. This is in stark contrast with the general established notion that weed is an effective treatment for anxiety. The truth is more complicated than that.

If you are going to use cannabis for anxiety, CBD is the only one that has shown to be effective.

When you stop smoking THC, you will be surprised at how much better your anxiety is controlled. Give yourself a few weeks to get used to this, as the act of stopping may temporarily increase anxiety due to either withdrawal or fear of anxiety.

Give Yourself A Chance To Improve

I should state that I have nothing against cannabis use. I view it in similar light to alcohol as a recreational substance and find it ridiculous that it’s still a Schedule 1 drug. More research needs to be done on cannabis so we can fully understand its medical applications and effects of recreational use.

However, if you find yourself compulsively using or seeking cannabis on a frequent basis, I am going to encourage you to take a break and see what it can do for your physical and mental health. You will notice that you sleep better, are more focused, have less brain fog, and are more resilient to stress.