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Don’t Be Bamboozled, Movement Is The Answer

I don’t think there is one, but there ought to be a Law, or at least a principle that states that the more complex a system is, the easier it is to use or interface with.

For example, the internal complexity of your iPhone is absolutely staggering. For most people it would be well beyond their ability to be able to program it, even if they dedicated several years of learning coding and so on. Yet, almost everyone (mom, you’re kind of bad at it tbh) is able to very efficiently use an iPhone.

Compare that to some of the first computers I grew up with in school, where you generally had to write a program in BASIC to make it actually do anything. Those systems were exponentially less complex than an iPhone, but they were much, much harder to use.

In the tech world there is something called the OSI 7-layer model (which makes me think of cake every time.) Basically, there are layers of complexity that are abstracted away by each layer above it. Bear with me for a second. Generally speaking computers are connected with physical wires, over which binary data flows. You COULD hypothetically send an email by injecting actual ones and zeroes into the wire. You could. But if you move up the 7-layer model, it gets much easier. In fact, if you move all the way up to layer 7, there is a pretty simple english-language way to send an email. All you have to do is type these commands:

david@ddn:~/$ telnet mail.dellanave.com 25
Trying 216.58.217.179…
Connected to mail.dellanave.com.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 mail.dellanave.com ESMTP Postfix (Ubuntu)
mail from: david@dellanave.com
250 2.1.0 Ok
rcpt to: david@dellanave.com
250 2.1.5 Ok
data
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: This is me writing a test
Hello, this is a message body
.
250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 19023E06A
quit
221 2.0.0 Bye

Really simple and easy, right!? I’m sure now that you’ve learned this you will send all your emails via raw commands sent directly to mail servers.

Probably not actually, because applications have evolved that make it even easier to send emails. Even attaching photos and grouping multiple emails and so on. The higher you go in these levels of abstraction, the easier it is to use, and the more complexity is hidden behind simplicity.

In other words, the more complex the system becomes, the easier it gets to use it.

What could possibly even be my point, now that I’ve taken you down this road of learning raw Simple Mail Transfer Protocol commands?

Every few years another system emerges purporting to solve a training problem which attacks the problem at one of the layers of the 21-layer cake that is the human body.

The problem is, they complicate a system that has evolved to be unbelievably easy to use by working their way down the model and trying to interface at a layer you have no business interfacing at. Like trying to send emails by tapping into the wires that connect computers.

Approaching physical training by tweaking the nervous system is no different.

Tackling movement problems by addressing the muscles is no different either.

Have you ever seen those videos of the “super-advanced” robots Boston Dynamics builds? That look more awkward than toddlers moving around in space? The smartest people on the planet are trying to figure out how to get things to move like humans and can’t even replicate it.

But you are effortlessly able to move your body any which way and do almost anything with it, without really even having to think about it – just by doing it.

Until of course a guru comes along to tell you that you’ve been doing it all wrong and you need to approach it from an infinitely more complex interface.

No, no, no. Your body already has the simplest, most evolved, easiest to use interface that has ever emerged for a complex system.

One of the core principles of training with biofeedback, and frankly the reason my gym is called The Movement, is that it really is that simple. All you need to do is move. Make sure you respond well to the movement, be creative with your movement, seek novelty with your movement, but Movement is as complicated as it needs to get.

by david Leave a Comment

The One Best Cooking Tool You Need

If you don’t have a dutch oven, you’re messing up.

Let me back up for a minute to some fundamentals of cooking that are important to understand, and most people don’t realize form the basis of all cooking.

There are really only about three ways to cook a protein (or anything for that matter). You can roast, braise, or grill it. Most people are familiar with grilling and roasting, but braising seems complicated and out of reach.

But it shouldn’t be, because it’s simple and almost idiot proof. Once you understand it, it’s actually one of the most simple and effective cooking methods there is, and a dutch oven is one of the best ways to do it.

You can very easily ruin a steak on the grill, and everyone has probably experienced dry, inedible turkey. Braising on the other hand, thanks to the use of liquid and steam is much more forgiving and almost inevitably results in tender, tasty meat.

Plus, the versatility of a dutch oven is unparalleled. You can cook stews, braise meat, bake bread, make desserts, or even use it to fry or sauté. If you were only going to have one single cooking vessel, a dutch oven would be what you’d want to have.

As an aside, many people don’t realize that slow cookers are essentially the same cooking method as a dutch oven, although not quite as versatile. I wouldn’t want a slow cooker as my only cooking vessel.

To get you started on dutch oven cooking I asked two of my friends, whom I was having a conversation on the wonders of dutch oven with, to provide their favorite recipes.

From my friend Jahed Momand, general purpose genius and product designer:

Here’s a basic template or pattern that you can tweak and vary, but can’t go wrong with.

1) Brown your meat, any good roasting meat in olive oil or coconut oil.

2) Remove the meat, add some chopped onions and garlic. Add celery if you want more of that southern stew taste. Sauté for 12-15 mins, until soft and brown.

3) Buy some of those extremely cheap chilis at the store. I recommend New Mexican, Anaheim, or if you are trying to burn your shit up, African Birds Eye. Layer them on top of the aromatic base.

4) Add your meat back on top of the aromatic base.

5) Add a can of crushed tomatoes (editor’s note, I prefer to buy whole peeled tomatoes and then hit them in the blender real quick) with water, 2-3 cups of lager or pilsner (e.g. Miller High Life) beer, 2 tbsp cumin, 1tsp salt, 2 bay leaves. Bring up the total volume to about 1-1.5 inches up the side of the meat.

6) Preheat your oven to ~300-325º. Put your dutch oven open into the oven. After 30 mins, flip the meat over (e.g. country ribs, chuck roast, etc. some meats dont make sense to flip, like chunked beef heart). Check to make sure the fluid level is still 1-1.5 inches up the side of the meat. Top it up with more beer or water. You want to keep everything else relatively submerged so it doesn’t burn.

7) Braise for 3.5-4 hours depending on the meat. Tougher cuts may take longer. You’re done when the meat falls apart when you stick a fork in ite.

8) Remove the dutch oven from the oven, and take the meat out. Pour the remains into a blender and puree. Use that as a sauce to dip the meat in, or for tacos, or for your eggs, or any other thing you might wanna try. I just used them on my eggs this morning, and I use 5 african birds eye chilis, and 8 new mexico peppers, and 1 pasilla pepper.

Basic ingredients list:

2-4 lbs of some kind of meat

1 14.5 can of crushed or whole tomatoes

2 tbsp cumin

1 tsp salt or to taste

2 bay leaves

A good quality cooking oil, like refined coconut oil, not vegetable oil.

1 medium onion

A whole head of garlic

1-2 cans of miller high life or equivalent

8 chilis, destemmed and deseeded (New Mexican, African Birds Eye, Japanese, Guajillo, etc)

Optional: 1 pasilla oaxaca pepper for smokiness

For Dessert:

From my friend JT Matherly, whom I have come to find is one of the finest cooks I’ve ever known:

Two favorite recipes from my late mother. The pie crust is my adaptation of a recipe given to her by an old family friend. Chess pies are common in the south but not well known in the rest of the country, which is really a shame as they are simple to make and delicious. It’s somewhat like a stiffer version of a custard, or a cheesecake, and not one bit less rich than either.

Pie crust — yields two 9″ single-crust pies or one 9″ double-crust pies.

Ingredients:

16 ounces (4 cups) all-purpose or pastry flour

Sifted:

2 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

10 ounces (1 and 1/4 cups) expeller-pressed coconut oil, room temperature, OR 10 oz cold leaf lard

Approximately 2 cups of ice water

Directions:

Mix all dry ingredients thoroughly and cut fat in with a pastry cutter, forks, knives, or whatever method you prefer. Do not blend completely, leave some small pea-sized bits of fat in the dough. Add a bit of ice water at a time until the dough comes together, it should be somewhat moist (but not wet), very pliable, and not crack when rolled out. Experience is the best teacher here. Roll crusts out and form pie shells immediately. Pre-formed single crust shells can be refrigerated (covered) for a day or two or frozen indefinitely if sealed. I do not recommend chilling the dough without forming it into a shell first, as it becomes too stiff to work with when chilled. While pastured leaf lard may be used in place of the coconut oil, I do not recommend shelf-stabilized lard, as it is highly processed and often contains trans fat.

Lemon Chess Pie

Adapted from the Doubleday Cookbook, 1975.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tablespoons flour Juice and zest from 2 large lemons
1/2 cup butter, melted
5 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly, place in an unbaked pie shell and bake for 45 – 60 minutes or until the filling has puffed up and is golden brown (it will deflate once removed from the oven and cooled). Cool completely, slice and serve. A good variation on this is substituting vanilla bean guts for the zest and bourbon for the lemon juice.

by david Leave a Comment

Your Place on The Learning Curve, or Jiro is Boring

I thought the movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi was nauseatingly boring.

If you’ve never seen it, or never heard of it, the movie chronicles an 85-year old (at the time) sushi chef who is widely considered the greatest sushi chef in the world, who administers a 10-seat restaurant in a subway station in Tokyo.

Most people who write about Jiro Dreams wax poetic about mastery and the dedication to his craft he has exhibited over a literal lifetime of perfecting his sushi, and implore you to pursue your own endeavors with the same dogged determination to continual improvement.

I see something else.

Personally I can’t think of anything worse than doing the exact same thing every day for sixty years. Acknowledging that I’m oversimplifying and dismissing what I’m sure is an expression of creativity and innovation over that time, it’s still the same thing for six decades.

See, something I know about myself is that I don’t thrive on that end of the learning curve. The thought of the energy and time required to eke out that last little bit of improvement puts me to sleep.

I live for the front end of the learning curve. I’ll dive head first into something I know nothing about, apply the models and understandings I have from other things, and dig and experiment and stumble until I’ve got it mostly figured out. I don’t mind the difficulty and frustration of being bad at it initially. In due time I’ll get half-decent at it.

And then I’m ready for the next challenge.

I know this about myself, so I embrace it. I will never be the best in the world at anything, except maybe the best at getting decent at a lot of things. Not only am I ok with that, I’m absolutely thrilled that I know this about myself so I never have to beat myself up for not going too far past that point in the curve.

I just started baking sourdough bread a couple months ago. The first loaves were mediocre. Now they’re pretty damn good. They’re likely never going to win international competitions, althooooough someone did remark that my bread was better than a bakery in Philly that is known as one of the best in the country.

In general people only think of mastery as the “correct” route to take. You see it exalted, and spoken of as if it’s the only pursuit that’s noble enough to be worthy of your time.

Not everyone is going to be a master! There are dozens of reasons why, and they don’t really matter.

The important thing is that you can reduce your own internal friction significantly by recognizing and embracing which part of the learning curve you thrive in.

If you hate being a beginner and you meet a lot of internal resistance starting new things then perhaps sticking to tried and true is better for you. Maybe you’re even well suited to pursue mastery.

But even if not, certainly you shouldn’t force yourself to try lots of new things and beat yourself up because you don’t enjoy it.

Or, maybe you know you hate the initial stages of learning something new, you thrive in the middle ground, and you know you’re not interested in mastery. Well, at least you know which part of the dip you need to push through.

The possibilities for where you lie on that spectrum are endless, but the overarching point is to identify and embrace the part of the curve that for you represents the least internal friction.

That way, you can spend more time doing things you enjoy with ease and fluidity, and less time frustrated and upset.