Pavel Tsatsouline
Pavel is a strength coach who has been around for many years. I hadn’t heard much about him in a while, then noticed this recent Huberman Lab podcast episode. It does not disappoint. Some key takeaways:
– “Grease the Groove” – one of the big ideas Pavel always endorses. Basically doing a short set of a few reps, many different times throughout the day. If you drop down for 5 pushups, 20 times in a day, that’s 100 pushups. Do the same with squats, kettlebell swings, pull-ups, etc. (if you don’t have a good spot for a pull-up bar, buy a Jayflex).
– Use those kettlebells that are gathering dust. I keep one in each of my offices.
– Using higher weight and less reps in the gym. I usually stay away from heavy weights, partly because I do 10-12 reps (when not doing super slow Body by Scienceworkouts), which causes more fatigue. Pavel recommends lower reps and stopping well short of muscle failure. It has been interesting lately to do a hard leg workout but then be able to walk normally the next day.
– Stop-start on squats. Michael Easter covered a similar technique. Basically just stopping somewhere near the bottom of a squat (can be an “air squat” with no weight), then after the pause at the bottom, raise back up.
– Zercher squats. Holding the bar in the front of the elbows (in the “antecubital fossa”). Uncomfortable on the skin of the forearms, but Pavel (and others) claim this position offers safety benefits for the rest of the body.
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David Whyte
• Some of the most amazing books I have read come from poets writing prose. David Whyte is one of those people. Check out his most recent books Consolations and Consolations II. Tim Ferriss interviewed him on a recent podcast episode.
• In this 9-minute video from 1994, Whyte discusses finding oneself in the hurried, corporate world. He translates the opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy as follows: In the middle of the road of life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost. He goes on to recite from memory the poem Lost by David Wagoner:
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
… Whyte has a lot to say about this poem. That you cannot sleepwalk your way (through life) into your destiny. That you should pay attention to your shadow, and to “what you have given away to remain safe.” That you should embrace silence in life, because “all the voices inside you will drown out any real change.” And finally to let the world find you.
Peanut Butter
• Peanuts are legumes (not technically nuts), and almost every nutritional study has deemed legumes healthy. But it is not a low calorie food. You also might hear concerns about seed oils (sometimes overblown) and added sugar (usually accurate), so look closely at ingredients.
• I found Teddie brand at Whole Foods: tastes excellent, not super expensive, comes in a glass jar, and has only peanuts and salt as ingredients. I later came across the Wirecutter page of peanut butter rankings: Teddie was #1.
Slowing Down
• Tiago Forte living life at a slower pace in Mexico. Here are a few lines from his X post:
– Everything runs in slow motion, especially compared to what I’ve come to expect in LA, from the speed of cars on the street, to how people talk, to the checkout line at the store. But you’re also more patient so it feels ok, and the days feel like they’re 5 hours longer
– Politics feels absent from daily life almost completely, like a distant concern, even though we’re near the capital among highly educated people. There’s no polarization or vilification of the other side like we’ve come to expect in the US
– People are SO much more social it’s kind of unbelievable. We get together with other couples and families multiple times per week, every weekend is packed and has at least one party, and you can just call someone up and see them the next day rather than scheduling weeks in advance. It’s easy to make new friends, whereas in the US it’s felt impossible for us.
Ruthlessly Slowing Down
• Just reread the book Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. Should read this book twice a year. It is hard to find anyone not in a hurry these days. David Zach says that we suffer from “hyperliving – skimming along the surface of life.” We often feel a “cancerous restlessness.” One long quote from Comer:
“… one of the greatest enemies of the human soul, before and after Edward Bernays: discontentment. That nagging feeling of always wanting more. Not just more stuff, but more life. The next thing might not be a thing at all; it might be graduation or marriage or children or a better job or retirement or whatever ‘it’ is for you on the horizon. But there’s always something just out of reach. We live with what the historian Arthur Schlesinger called an ‘inextinguishable discontent.’ It’s what the poet of Ecclesiastes described as ‘a chasing after the wind.’”
• The book includes another profound quote from author Timothy Keller, about the benefits of slowing down via meditation practice:
“Persons who meditate become people of substance who have thought things out and have deep convictions, who can explain difficult concepts in simple language, and who have good reasons behind everything they do. Many people do not meditate. They skim everything, picking and choosing on impulse, having no thought-out reasons for their behavior.”
• Comer ends the book with practical chapters calling the reader to action on four practices: 1) Silence / Solitude, 2) Sabbath, 3) Simplicity, and 4) Slowing.
Quotes
Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.
When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.
– Seneca
There is another world, but it is in this one.
– WB Yeats or Paul Éluard
