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Physical Culture First

Quick basic physics lessons in case you forgot since school. A lever is a simple machine consisting of a beam pivoting on a fulcrum. If the lengths of the beam on each side of the fulcrum are equal you translate equal force, so pushing down with 10lbs would lift up 10lbs on the other end. But by lengthening the lever on one side, you can multiply the force many times. Pushing down with 10lbs of force on a long lever could lift up 100lbs on the other side.

Archimedes famously said, “Give me a lever that is long enough, and fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

In finance leverage borrows this idea of multiplication of force but the application is slightly different. Leverage is essentially using debt to increase returns. So for example if with $100 you can borrow $1000 and double your money by investing it, you walk away with $1000, or a 10X return after you’ve paid back the $1000 you borrowed. Using leverage you turned a 2X return into a 10X return. Of course, if you lose the money you’re still on the hook, so leverage is very dangerous.

Leverage, along with optionality which I will discuss another time, is one of the core concepts I live my life by and I want to explain to you how it applies to life and why I think it’s so important to you.

A big picture way to think about leverage is in terms of how much force or energy you need to apply to effect a change. High leverage requires low energy input. Keep this in mind.

Making changes to the way we think is an extremely low leverage pursuit. Think about the years of therapy required to rewire the brain from trauma or to change deeply ingrained behavioral patterns with cognitive or psychotherapy approaches. It’s a slow process because we have very little leverage over the way we think.

This is where physical culture comes in. The leverage you have over your physical vessel is massive, direct, and concrete. If you dedicate an hour three times a week to physical training you will see changes. If you work on getting stronger, you will get stronger. You can exert massive leverage with relatively minimal effort. (With apologies to anyone who may not have full ability to affect their physical vessel.)

You may not be able to easily change your brain directly, but you can definitely change your body directly.

And by changing the body, you change the brain. And the leverage is multiplied even further.

Being physically stronger enables you to be mentally or psychologically stronger, not least because the body and mind is the same thing.

You know what one of the absolute most common things I hear from clients and gym members is? Some variation of “I never knew how much getting stronger would change the way I feel and show up in the world.” And then they go on to make other changes they were formerly unable to make for years upon years.

Leverage is why physical culture is the starting point, the very foundation of self improvement. This isn’t some meathead pursuit that is about vanity and bigger muscles or bragging about strength personal records. This is very literally the highest leverage thing you can do with your time to improve your life.

My question to you is, where else do you see leverage?

by david Leave a Comment

Even If “Everything in Moderation” Wasn’t Terrible Advice…

In part 1 we talked about moderation and how it’s a bad fit for humans (or living things in general) biologically. I don’t know about you but for me biological incompatibility is a pretty good compelling not to chase something, but I think there’s another good reason.

As previously discussed we can sort of characterize moderation when it comes to diet as eating a consistently appropriate amount of relatively good quality food. Appropriate amount isn’t defined by any subjective external judgement, we’re talking a quantity that is close or exactly at your metabolic rate.

From a practical standpoint what would need to happen for someone to be able to actually do that?

For one they would need to know how much to eat, what to eat, and in what proportion. If we’re coming from an ancestral perspective with deep cultural roots and rituals then you would have an almost universal intuition that you’d eat a meal about three times a day, have almost nothing in between, and the meals would consist of a small portion of meat, some vegetables, and some sort of starch.

Of course a modern human, especially in the west, has none of that cultural programming to fall back on. So now instead of an intuitive understanding you need a deep technocratic cognitive understanding of macronutrients and quantities. You need to know that you need (rough numbers, okay?) 150 grams of protein, 100 grams of fat, and 150 grams of carbohydrates.

You need to learn and understand that 50 grams of carbohydrates from Honey Nut Cheerios may not be qualitatively the same thing as 50 grams of sweet potato, even if quantitatively they’re the exact same thing.

Once you have a good understanding of the total quantities you need to eat, and an idea of how to break them up (it’s not at all self-evident and obvious that a normal portion of protein is only about 35 grams of protein) into meals you then need to know how to actually put those meals together.

Cooking isn’t hard, but like anything that isn’t hard once you know how to do it the idea of cooking a meal from raw meat, dirty vegetables, and dried starch grains can be pretty daunting. If your experience with cooking has more to do with packets and boiled water than sauteeing garlic until it’s fragrant you’re going to experience a pretty steep learning curve.

But wait, you can’t get on with your cooking until you shop for ingredients. Shopping for raw ingredients can be pretty intimidating. How much do you buy? What do you buy? Do you have a recipe you’re following? If not it’s a pretty tall order to send someone to the grocery store to just by raw ingredients and put together a meal when they have no experience doing so.

The fact is we could go on and on breaking down the skills that make up the ladder of being able to eat moderately. Maybe you have some of the skills, but do you have all of them? If you have all of the skills in a conscious competence sense, can you execute on them without thinking. Is it easy and automatic?

I would argue that most people who are getting the “everything in moderation” advice are probably lacking at least some of the core skills that you would actually need to eat moderately consistently.

Does giving them advice imbue them with those skills? No. Does it actually offer them anything they can act on what so ever? No!

Not only is “everything in moderation” a biological improbability (especially in modern times with engineered foods that are out of step with our biology) but it’s also a practical impossibility.

Acknowledging that there is a whole ladder of skill involved in complex functions goes a long towards helping you understand how to achieve those functions, or help someone else achieve them. It’s pretty poor coaching to tell someone “everything in moderation” and send them on their way to figure it out. It’s phenomenal coaching to give them bite-sized skills to work on and the framework with which to integrate them into complex functions.

Break it down, learn, act, do better.

by david Leave a Comment

Time to Stand Up For Something

(Note: I wrote this on January 1, 2017. The events may have changed slightly, but it’s never been more relevant.)

The past few weeks have brought about a couple social protests that have been interesting enough to really get me thinking about this topic. A couple weeks ago I got involved in a little social satire that accidentally blew up into national news. Then yesterday some NoDAPL protesters scaled a beam in Minneapolis’ U.S. Bank Stadium and dropped themselves and a huge banner from the ceiling – calling for U.S. Bank to divest from Dakota Access.

Now, I don’t really care what you believe about the DAPL, because it doesn’t matter to my point. My point is that if you call yourself a freedom-loving American then you have to have tremendous respect for these non-violent social gadflies who risked their own butts to create social tension.

Just like the other social protest people flocked to social media to wring their hands over what could have happened if “something went wrong” or “someone got hurt.” Folks, the world is a dangerous and scary place. Very often the harm that is happening by maintaining the status quo is far greater than whatever freak situation might get someone hurt in a non-violent protest. It’s a cost of doing business. And if you call yourself an American who wraps themselves in the warmth of the constitution you should be damn thankful that there are people willing to take on those risks.

“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”

Martin Luther King, everyone’s favorite whitewashed social revolutionary wrote those words from JAIL.

Again, let me reiterate: It doesn’t matter if you think they should plow that pipeline right through the middle of a river. If you love freedom, you have to love someone who is willing to stand up for their beliefs especially when they’re going to pay consequences for it. Otherwise I’m told North Korea is lovely this time of year and you will surely be pleased that there are no dissenters amongst your midst.

Which brings me to you. I want you to have the guts to stand up for what you believe in more often – even if it’s unpopular. Maybe it means telling someone on the street to pick up their dog’s shit. Maybe it means standing up for someone you don’t know who is being harassed on the street. It’s not always going to be safe. It’s not risk free. Take some risks. Strengthen your spine with deadlifts and declarations.

If you’ve been looking for a hero I have good news and bad news: you’re the hero.