On Monday morning, you're the man with the plan. You've planned what to eat. You've planned to go to the gym three times. You feel unstoppable. Then Thursday shows up. You got five hours of sleep. Your son has a hissy fit in the morning and makes you late for work. Your boss is visibly anxious about the big deadline and you're rushing to get the job done in time. So when you finally get home, all you want is to sit down on the sofa and calm your nerves with a burger and fries. Then you...
9 days ago • 7 min read
You promised yourself you'd go to the gym. Maybe you went a few times. Then what happened? Life got busy, or you got sick, and you fell off the wagon. And it took weeks or months to start again. You've probably repeated this more times than you care to admit. I know, because that used to be me. And after 15+ years of trying, I finally worked out why. Here's the part of the gym nobody admits they hate: Packing the bag The commute Changing Waiting for the machine The shower after The journey...
16 days ago • 8 min read
“Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” — Robert Fulghum We talk a lot about what to teach our children, and we forget that the most important teaching happens without a single word being said. They watch you. They imitate you. They speak as you speak. They even cough as you cough. Let's call it the Shadow Curriculum. Enrollment lasts eighteen years. Attendance is perfect. And you're the only teacher, prepared or not. It teaches him how to...
23 days ago • 9 min read
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” — James Baldwin I don't know what I expected from fatherhood other than to have a little pink mush to teach the basics. But in the end, I feel like I was the one who was given the bigger lesson. What I didn't expect was that fatherhood would work on me in layers. First it was a constraint on my time. Then a demand on my readiness. Then a claim on my future. Then a clock I couldn't...
about 1 month ago • 9 min read
Most men in their forties can tell you their pension balance to the nearest thousand. Ask the same man what his body will be able to do in twenty years and he has no idea. He's never checked. There's nothing to check. Both are accounts. Both compound. He's been making regular deposits into one of them since he was twenty-five. It wasn't always like this. Your body used to be your livelihood. You worked it until you couldn't, or until your sons could take over. Then over the last half century...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Most men think muscle requires equipment. A membership at minimum, ideally a garage full of iron. Most of my training happens in about 10 square meters (107 square feet). And I'm more muscular now than I've ever been. My mother grabbed my arm to say something a while back and stopped mid-sentence because of what was underneath the sleeve. That's a stupid thing to be pleased about at 39, and I was pleased about it anyway. But that's the byproduct, not the aim. What I actually train for is...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
709 days without missing a single workout. If you'd told me that ten years ago I'd have laughed at you. I've spent 4+ years being obese and fifteen years failing to train consistently. But the part that surprises people isn't the number as much as this: It took less willpower than attempting to train three times a week ever did. Fifteen years of Mondays When I was obese, the plan was always food. Eat better starting Monday, and this time it would hold. I wasn't training at all in those years,...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
I woke up in cold sweat. Held my hand on my chest and counted my pulse in the dark. It was racing. This is the night it happens. Now, I know what you're thinking. Wasn't this supposed to be about drinking? I'll get to that. But the story starts somewhere else. What it actually was At 34, I had begun to fear the silence. That's when it usually came. My fear would show up in my body as a heart attack. I'd wake soaked with my heart galloping, certain the reaper had come early. They were panic...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Everyone assumes the difference between a rich family and a poor one is mainly the number in the bank account. That's not true. I grew up close enough to both to watch the real difference play out, and it had almost nothing to do with how much money was actually in the house. A friend with a stock portfolio worth a million dollars by the time we reached high school. A girlfriend handed $31,000 the day she turned eighteen. My own mother, who gave me a good childhood but always with the...
2 months ago • 4 min read