Lately, I’ve been talking about how to inject variability into your lifestyle to make you a more robust / anti-fragile person with Rockstar recovery.

How I arrived at this idea is based on the band Tool – one of the best bands of all time, bar none.

If Maynard from Tool showed up at my door and invited me to watch their performance from backstage and hang out, my answer would be yes (of course), and I would be ready to go. The key part is that the next day would be a normal day!

Even if Maynard never shows up, this is a good template for how to be “ready to go” most days. You will never be 100% the next day, every day; but most days you should be close. This is an eustress model.

If your mode of training is always too hard, you still be ground to moon dust, especially your joints, for days on end. Not only does this suck, your gainZ will be impaired too.

If you never push it, you won’t’ know what you are truly capable of either. There is a time and place to light your proverbial nutsack on fire and Goggins-dat-shit. The caveat is that it should be infrequent, and if you do it, I expect PR or near PR performance (distress model).

You may be thinking, “Sounds great, Dr crazy nerd, but what can I do about any of this? . . . outside of the basics with violent consistency?”

I do believe there is a simple and rarely mentioned method to ratchet up your result without spending a ton of time on it.

I believe the rate limiter to doing hard things is the professor part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex (PFC). This is the newer-thinky part of your brain.

When you do hard things, you use the PFC to temporarily override the lizard limbic (hard wired) part of your brain that only cares about survival.

A great example is cold water immersion (CWI).

When the lock down first happened, I had my converted freezer all ready to go and had been doing almost daily CWI. I figured it was a great time to “double down” on CWI and aerobic work in the AM.

For the next year and a half, 6 days a week, I did CWI.

My hypothesis (fancy geek word for “educated guess”) before I started was that it would get easier in time. I also wanted real data/ experience for the Phys Flex Cert so I pricked my finger multiple times for blood glucose, did RMR before and daily with my metabolic cart, did MOXY testing pre/ post etc. along the way.

Fast forward to 1.5 years later and to my shock, every time right before I got into water ranging in temps from as low as 38 F to as high as 50F, I never once was stoked to do it.

My brain still had some hesitation before I got in. That was the lizard limbic system saying”

“Hey, you crazy-ass nerd, what the F are you doing? You know that if you stay in this cold water too long you could die? And this will feel horrible too!”

And that is true . . .If you stay in cold water for too long, you will die. Granted the safety margin with controlled full body (no face) exposure to cold water is quite high, your lizard brain does not “know” that fact. It just knows: cold water = bad stuff.

The reality is that, in a controlled environment and exposures only up to 5 minutes, death to my knowledge, has not happened. Again, the key here is no face exposure (no gasp reflex where you inhale water and drown) . . . Since it is possible to get paralyzed muscle action before frank hypothermia, which is very bad in open water. . . .it’s very beneficial that the converted freezer is a controlled environment that’s easy to enter and exit.

Each time you do cold water immersion, you have to use the new PFC part of your brain to think into the future about the benefits, how much better it will feel post, etc.

So your lizard limbic system is going mad to keep you out of the cold; yet, you can temporarily override it by choosing to do the hard thing of getting your glute max into the cold.

I believe this has a huge benefit in lateral transfer to other parts of your life such as:

  • Getting on the rower to do a hard 2k.
  • Doing the push away from your plate when you are lowering calories on purpose to get leaner.
  • Doing a 19-24 hour fast.
  • Opting to take the stairs.
  • Go for a walk when you feel that you don’t have the time.
  • Meditate/ prayer / quiet time.

You get the idea.

By opting to find a way to do a hard thing each day, you are training your brain to make that process easier each time.

Know that it will probably never become super easy.

The goal is to reduce the time to pick the better option.

Use your professor brain to body slam the lizard limbic system on occasion for better body comp and performance.

Rock on!
Mike

PS – If you enjoyed this message, you will love the Physiologic Flexibility Cert that opens twice a year.  Make sure to get on to the newsletter via the tab at the very top of this page to get all the details.   If you have questions, just opt in to the newsletter and drop me a note by hitting reply to the newsletter.

PPS- if you did not get enough of Maynard, here is an amazing interview to check out.