November 2022

Hope you're all enjoying a good Thanksgiving weekend. Here's what's on my mind lately:

Motivation may be affected by anti-oxidants. There's no end to the links between the body and the mind,

Plantar Fasciitis (PF) progress - I've been paying more attention to my feet and their strength (or lack thereof). I've also noticed how much plyometric training the runners' feet get in all the Kenyan training videos I love watching. Watch this one - the coach's feet seem to operate like leaf springs. Just look at how he bounces. Here's another video with a bunch of drills. These went on for 90 minutes and much of it involved bouncing on the toes. My feet would give out after about 15 minutes of bouncing like that. Plyo work will be a regular part of my routine once I'm back to running.

Fat oxidation and lactate levels have a lot to do with each other: "The data of the present study showed that accumulation of lactate in plasma is strongly correlated to the reduction seen in fatty acid oxidation with increasing exercise intensities. The first rise of lactate concentration occurred at the same intensity as the intensity which elicited maximal fat oxidation rates."

This is next on my reading list, seems appropriate for the business environment we are operating in. Grove is a legend here in Silicon Valley. Paranoia is my natural set point anyways, so I feel like I already have an advantage.

If you want to see obsession + data driven training, look no further than the rising dominance of Norwegian endurance athletes. In this Rich Roll podcast Ironman champ Gustav Iden and his training partner (and Olympic gold medalist) Kristian Blummenfelt discuss some of the advanced training tools they combine with incredible work ethic and long term vision to reach the top of the podium. This day in the life video is pretty motivating. Most people couldn't even eat as much as Iden requires to sustain that training load (I sure couldn't).

Continuing my coverage of highly recommended home workout gear, this one is awesome bang-for-the-buck and makes lots of your other gear more versatile. Interestingly, grip force turns out to be a useful way to measure cognitive decline as you age, although I've not found evidence that actively working the grip slows decline (if anyone knows of any please pass it along!). If you find yourself needing to add resistance to your home weight set, but don't want to invest in more weights, throw on some Grip4orce and see how hard those light weights get.