2 weeks in...

We are two week into 2014 and how are things going?

Funny thing is for me I haven’t really got into my training yet but I am getting results. The Navy Seals mixed with the 5/2diet, and just the additional spin class on a Monday are getting me the results I wanted. I’ve targeted my birthday and beyond this year. 

Every year I promise myself I’m going to get this result or that result by March and then I allow myself to get distracted. This year I’m not going to overcomplicate things, just back to basics, keep it simple and get it done. 

Over the last  year I’ve come to the conclusion that getting fit shouldn’t be thought of as being separate to your normal life, it should be considered with the same kind of relaxed approached as cleaning your teeth or taking a shower. 

Each morning I go through my little ritual of shower, shave, face cleanse, breakfast, clean teeth, leave house… obviously dressed, unless I’m still dreaming. Your fitness or health routine should just be added to that, easy. 

I’ve been commissioned to write some stories for a Science Fiction Publication and an Alternative Reality book around the First World War. So yesterday I visited the Army Museum in Chelsea. I’m not sure whether it’s my growth curve or the state of mind I’m in but I found it one of the best museums I’ve visited. I’m meeting a publisher next week and we had planned to meet at the Imperial War museum, before I found out that it’s closed till July in preparation for the WW1 Centenary.

The first part of the museum has an exhibition all about IEDs. I read this online and it left me cold. In reality it’s fascinating, but sad. They show you the history of IEDs and the devastation they can cause then the exhibition shows you what’s going on in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. Just that section took me hours to get through. 

The next sections just traces the history of the British army. Two elements stood out:

The Bank of England was founded in 1694 to help finance the British War Effort. 

The Boer War cost Britain £201million (equivalent to £11.5 Billion in todays money). 

There are lots of lessons that can be taken from history and reapplied to anything we do now. The ideas from the Boer war can be transferred into our own context. 

I think one of the biggest lessons I have been learning from the research I’m doing at the moment is what next?

The Navy Seal’s goal selection method takes you up to hitting the target and then goes beyond to the extraction point. 

This is where we need to study and understand more. If you want to lose fat, what do you do when you get there? If you want to get in shape, what do you do when you get the shape you want? If you want to do a triathlon or a marathon, what happens afterwards? 

No one thinks about that bit. 

Last week I was thinking about resilience and perhaps what we do is approach it in such a lifeless and boring manner it doesn’t engage us. I have a pile of books beside me all about resilience, they are SO DULL. 

But what if we chose to use sport as a metaphor for understanding stress, dealing with it in creative ways and enabling us to use more an more innovative solutions, obviously underpinned with strong scientific principles. 

i watched Rush last night so let’s visualise life as a Formula one car racing round a track. On board the car we have all sorts of things going on. The right type of tyres for the surface of the road, the right engine and gear set up, then you have the balance of the car that allows it to perform optimally throughout the race. The driver concentrating, and driving the car in a way that brings out the best in it. The design of the aerodynamics. Everything. 

We know each of the tracks throughout the season changes, we know that certain seasons have different conditions and we know that the other cars around us are making adjustments as well. 

So there we are in a car screaming round a race track. Go too fast and you start to wear the tyres or the brakes start to overheat or your fuel consumption is too high, go too slow and the tyres lose temperature. All the while this is going on the driver is trying to drive. 

Now imagine your his race manager and you like micro managing. Can you picture it? 

“Lewis, take this corner slower, ok up change and again and again…” Every tiny single element you tell him what to do. He would be going nuts! Probably wouldn’t be able to think straight and would actually perform badly. 

Now imagine the total opposite. The manager doesn’t tell Lewis the problems that the diagnostics are coming up with, so he drives ‘blind’ till the car fails. Again a failure by his manager. So he has to balance his words carefully, helping but not giving too much information. But here is the other thing, the driver hears the information logically, so he doesn’t get upset, he assimilates it and uses the information he’s being told to optimise what he has at that time, making small adjustments. 

As a metaphor for life Formula 1 is interesting. To perform optimally we need enough information and guidance to help us, too much becomes overload and is worthless, too little and you don’t have the relevant information to function. 

Years ago I watched an American TV show called 7 days to Gameday. After Sunday night’s game it followed an American Football team through the next 7 days. Fascinating. How they analysed their performance, analysed the next team they’d be playing and prepared for that game. 

I’d imagine that exactly what they do in Formula 1. They look at how the car and team can improve their performance each week. 

So if you take this as a metaphor for your life, what insights do you get? 

What could you do differently? 

How could you prepare for the changing environmental conditions? Do you have different sets of tyres you can change as the conditions change? Do you have a different set up?

How could you train yourself to deal with the stresses that it will bring? Or prepare for them? 

Sometimes I think it’s possible to not even realise you are stressed.

In 1989 I was a partner in a small Research and Development company. We weren’t very big, 4 equal partners, designing different solution to problems we’d identified in lots of different areas from architecture to building to the economy and dentistry. The work was brilliant and really expanded my mind. I used to start work at 5.30am in a mews off the Grey’s Inn road. I like working early because it’s easier to travel, and the office is quiet and I could get a lot done before the phones started ringing at 9am. One of my partners liked working 12-8ish, the others would roll in between 3 and 5 in the afternoon and work till late. I would usually work from 5.30am to 11pm or 12 midnight, drive home and be back in the office for 5.30am. 

I didn’t think for a moment this was stressful, it didn’t occur to me. I did my workouts at home when I got in and slept 4-5 hours a night. 

18 months later I lost time. 

I was sitting at a junction in my car and I didn’t know what to do for about 15 minutes. 

For 15 minutes I sat there blank. I don’t know if I had a minor stroke or seizure of some sort but I know I listened to my body. From the next day I started reducing my hours to around 12 a day and my efficientcy went through the roof. I realised that I could achieved more in a hour fresh than I could in the last 6 when I was fatigued. 

I can still do 4-6 weeks at full tilt, but now I’m more careful. I understand how much I can push and how to work optimally within myself and keep a much higher level of consistency. 

Think about some of these ideas, if they relate to you please use them, or maybe you think about it in a very different way that might help me, or others, please feel free to share your wisdom or insights.