Maintaining Peak Performance in Self-Isolation
I have a confession to make: working from home has made me a chronic sitter. I find myself sitting in a chair at my computer writing or coding for hours at a time, all day and almost all night. Nevermind that my Fitbit is buzzing me to move my body every hour. The idea that sitting is as bad as smoking has been gnawing at me for weeks (though that theory has been somewhat debunked).
I had a routine down. I walked on average 12k steps a day going to and from the office, CrossFit, and home. I’m now at 5500k steps a day, on a good day.
Is there anything I can possibly do to offset all the bad I’m doing by sitting? Maybe it’s not so much the sitting as much as it is the eating, then sitting.
In an attempt to maintain as much of the same routine as I did before the shelter-in-place orders from the city, I’ve come up with this new plan:
- Daily fasted CrossFit bodyweight workouts which I do from a 7’x3’ space beside my bed. I’m now doing online workouts over Zoom/Hangouts with friends from my box.
- I’m especially motivated by competition so I’ll do some kind of physical challenge with friends or a personal challenge, i.e. 100 burpees for time. But it’s got to be a challenge where a score is kept. After all, you can’t improve on anything you’re not measuring.
- I’m also sticking to my normal time-restricted feeding schedule of 4–8pm, which I’ve been practicing on and off for a few years now. I know that’s not necessarily the most ideal TRF schedule for circadian rhythm optimization but it’s what works for me since I’m sitting at my computer most of the morning and afternoon coding, emailing, or researching.
- Getting great sleep. That’s obviously easier said than done but it’s a huge priority for me, as it should be for everyone. My daily exercise routines definitely help me sleep better. Oddly enough, I’m actually sleeping better than before the outbreak. Could it be that everyone self-isolating at home is imparting a calm onto each other through our forced vacation from our otherwise frenetic pace of life?
- I’m keeping the same diet as before which is relatively low-carb paleo and nose-to-tail carnivore because that’s what works for me and helps fuel my performance.
All that said, I’m happy to report that I’ve gained very little (if any) unwanted weight since the outbreak and I’m more or less maintaining my metabolic conditioning.
(I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to pick up a barbell again.)
Supplements and Practices to Fortify Your Constitution
First and foremost, I’d say we should all strive to hack our diets and lifestyle to where we don’t actually need supplements to survive and to put on as much natural, lean muscle as possible (without going overboard, of course). Because in a situation like this where you have to be lean and mean, any supplement that you rely on to function normally is going to be a tremendous liability in the long run. And your muscles are an amino-acid reservoir that will insure you against famine, disease, and even depression from self-isolation.
But assuming we can still buy goods at the market and supply chains are operational, my go-to immune-boosting food supplement has, and always has been, raw ginger and apple cider vinegar. Ginger’s been proven to ameliorate respiratory conditions, poor digestion, nausea, and so much more. I take two heaping tablespoons of this concoction upon waking up, before a workout, before I go to bed, and/or after a meal.
After that, I’d say I’m generally not the best resource for which supplements to take because my diet covers my nutritional needs. My labs generally don’t show deficiencies except for possibly low testosterone which I’ve been working to rectify with DHEA and Pregnenolone (thanks to Dr. Paulvin).
But my daily stack includes (some for insurance, others out of habit):
- Beef liver, heart, kidney (from Ancestral Supplements)
- Vitamin D3 + K (5000 iu daily)
- Magnesium
- DHEA & Pregnenolone
- Gingko Biloba
- CoQ10
- L-Lysine
- Bulletproof collagen in my organic cold brew coffee in the morning
- I’ve also recently been taking Totum Sport/Nite, which is essentially highly-mineralized seawater that’s pumped from 20–30m below plankton blooms.
My #1 discipline that helps me maintain a strong constitution, informs all my other behavior, and serves as the non-negotiable part of my day, is a sport — CrossFit. For which I’d say 50% of the value is in the community and our collective fitness-centric, never-say-die mindset.
When I started my CF journey three years ago, I joined a network and family of people who make fitness their #1 priority. Day and day out we’re bonding over our shared agony, but now more than ever, we’re relying on each other for motivation and inspiration to stay fit. And with that said, I’d posit that there’s nothing more effective at achieving your highest levels of General Physical Preparedness (GPP) than being part of a family of highly-motivated fitness fanatics. Especially during this time when a lot of us need community support to stay active at home.
And when I started biohacking in 2014, I realized that in order to achieve my highest potential, I’d have to surround myself with people smarter, faster, stronger, and more agile than me. So I started a biohacking show so I could have conversations with the smartest people in health. I joined the best CrossFit box money could buy so I could train with the fittest on Earth. I joined a mastermind group with one of my favorite writers and mentors, Benjamin P Hardy. I read the seminal works by some of the most prolific health writers of our time. And it’s all history from there. Every lesson learned, every show performed, every book read, and every workout session ever taken has been preparing me for this moment, right now. All my education and training are finally coming into play.
What’s more, some of my closest friends in biohacking and fitness are also the people that, in the event of a disaster or an apocalypse scenario, are going to make up my Seal Team Six.
I also spend a good amount of time in deep thought and prayer, thinking about my future and the future of humanity. Not only do I pray to be physically prepared to fight the good fight, but also that I’m spiritually prepared to meet my end. Consequently, faith, gratitude, stillness, and surrender are the emotional traits I practice to build confidence and an ironclad constitution.
Biohacking Fear and Herd Mentality
Fear and panic are born from a lack of accurate information and preparedness. The whole reason why I started biohacking was to optimize my physical preparedness, my mental preparedness, and my spiritual preparedness. And now we should all be adding emergency preparedness to this list. To achieve high levels of each requires deep thought, due diligence, planning, and training. These are pillars in the biohacking discipline.
Just a little background on me, I studied Economics (with minors in Anthropology and Food Science) at NYU and I’m a Technology Risk Manager and Cybersecurity specialist by trade. I spent the last 15+ years managing IT risk for Fortune 500 companies and global banks. What most people don’t realize is that every publicly-traded company has to have, by law, a Disaster Recovery Plan and a Business Continuity Plan in place in the event of a catastrophe. And it’s only a viable plan if it’s tested regularly with drills and exercises.
It’s the training that you put into the plan that makes it effective, not just putting it on paper or studying it. It has to be put into practice, regularly (just like our biohacking and our fitness).
How do you know if you’re prepared if you’re not testing yourself regularly? It’s not enough to just take in information, but you have to act and do. And the more you do, the more confident and secure you will become, in yourself and how you fit in with your community and the world around you.
So I’ve often wondered, why don’t individuals take the same level of care and consideration into mitigating their health risks as corporations do for mitigating their business risks? If you were the CEO of your life (which by default we all are), would you accept not having a plan in case of a major setback? Would you be able to sleep at night knowing that you weren’t prepared for an unexpected interruption in your business?
Background checks are one example of risk-mitigating due diligence that corporations employ. As financially burdensome and time-consuming due diligence may seem, a well-managed company will run thorough criminal and financial background checks on everyone they hire. But how many couples run background checks on each other before marriage? Probably very few. But doing so could potentially save couples a lot of heartache, time, and money. And that’s why corporations include it as part of their standard operating procedure (SOP).
And while corporations are an organized group of humans coming together to plan and develop strategies to ensure their collective future, we all as individuals have the same gift of forward-planning.
Fun fact: The single greatest differentiator between humans and other animals is our ability to plan and predict possible future outcomes say six months from now, a year from now, or even 10, 20, 100 years into the future. And to do that effectively, we need accurate and reliable information, outstanding leadership, and a plan. And a plan B to our plan A. And a plan C, and a D, and an E.
Most would agree, our gov’t gets a big F for not being prepared to deal with one of, if not the most, predictable of disaster scenarios: a pandemic.
(How’s your unqualified belief in the unified chain of command in our country’s leadership holding up these days? Or did you ever have one?)
And in this situation, it’s not about the lethality of the virus but rather the confluence of a whole host of economic risk factors leading to the possible collapse of the US (and/or global) economy ranging from dishonest leadership, misinformation, rampant unemployment, global supply chain disruptions, poor foreign relations, unlimited quantitative easing measures (the FED willy-nilly printing US currency), runaway inflation, etc. The risks/threats to our economic stability are pretty endless.
And so it pays to strive for unparalleled resilience, which can be achieved through proper planning and preparedness. But the right kind of planning and preparedness is key. If you plan and train for the worst-case-scenario, you’ll likely be ready for anything that comes your way. Now’s a good a time as any to start preparing for the worst so you can actually come out stronger and smarter when the dust finally settles.
If you ever saw Crimson Tide (one of my favorite movies), Capt. Ramsey (Gene Hackman) orders a drill after a fire in the galley is started, killing the chef. Lieutenant Hunter (Denzel Washington) disagrees with Ramsey’s decision to run a drill in the middle of a crisis but Capt. Ramsey justifies it by saying that in war anything can happen, anytime and we need to be prepared for anything.
We could get hit by another virus. Or a natural disaster. Or war.
By the way, NYC has been telling residents to prepare for a major disaster for years, especially since Hurricane Sandy. They’ve listed instructions for all NYC residents to develop a disaster/evacuation plan, a go-bag, etc.
But people ignore it or make it a low priority because well, there are bills to pay, things to do, people to see, yada yada.
But there are the select few who give a lot of thought to this either because it’s their job, or because of how they were trained. Mankind most likely still exists on this planet today because of people like them.
It might be hard to see now how or why we’ll have to evacuate NYC one day but the COVID-19 pandemic is crippling us because we weren’t adequately prepared. And we weren’t prepared because someone up top said to ignore it, it’s a hoax.
The question is, do you trust your government more than you trust yourself to protect you and your family? Imho, it ought to be the other way around. Radical self-reliance is truly the American way (it also happens to be the fourth principle of Burning Man).
As an American, we all should have some semblance of RSR precisely because our government has evolved to do so little to actually protect the weakest members of society. Because they want the private sector to do it all. But guess what — that style of governance doesn’t work in a pandemic and now that the private sector is essentially fucked six ways to Sunday, we’re all now left to be our own #1 resource for health, happiness, and safety — as it should be, if you ask me.
So, my message to everyone is to stay informed and educated so you can plan, prepare, and train more effectively. But choosing your information sources wisely is paramount. Arm yourself with the knowledge and strategies that are going to enrich and inspire you to self-sufficiency. Doing so will not only make you fearless but it’ll also keep you one step ahead of the less-informed masses.
To that end, tune into Biohack the World’s upcoming events (online Zoom calls) with some of the greatest minds in health and wellness. And if you’re looking for the latest in science-backed and vetted information regarding COVID-19, you can visit www.covid19immune.com, which is an incredible COVID-19 information portal.