Gratitudes of the Day

1. Grateful there were some tickets left to my friend's improv show tomorrow night. I totally slacked on picking any up until this morning.

2. Grateful that the kids at Judi's House let me hang out with them and make candles last night. I volunteer there a few nights a month and it is easily one of my favorite ways to spend a night. I wonder if the kids realize that the volunteers get as much out of them as they (hopefully) get from us...

3. Not to be superficial, but I'm grateful that tomorrow's payday. Gotta pay some bills!

Gratitudes of the Day

1. Immensly grateful for this steaming hot cup of Novo Coffee that I'm currently slurping down as I type this. My sleep patterns got all screwed up over the weekend so I've been waking up between 3-4am the past few days instead of my usual 4:50. Easy to do on off days from the gym, but coming off of workout days makes that a bit more of a challenge. On the plus side, it allowed me to get these written down before I hit the office, so I'm grateful for that!

2. I'm grateful for a couple emails yesterday with Steve Pulcinella. Steve's one of the US's best ever Highland Games athletes and strongman competitors and I reached out to him looking for some training info for the upcoming Highland games season, as well as Olympic lifting. I've always prided myself on programming my own training, but I'm really getting hooked by the idea of being able to get programs written specifically for me by great coaches and then being able to rotate through them.

If you're frustrated by lack of progress in the gym, I encourage you to hire an online coach and have something written for you. Almost everyone out there who writes articles on any of the popular training websites (T-Nation, EliteFTS, etc) does online coaching (nutrition, training or both), and the pricing is very reasonable.

3. I'm very grateful to Shelby Starnes for introducing me to the books Sit Down and Shut Up and Hardcore Zen, both written by Brad Warner. I've always gravitated towards Buddhism but I've found it difficult to really digest many of the writings of Buddhism outside of the Dalai Lama. Brad's writing and breaking down of some of the Zen Buddhism concepts has made for excellent reading and I'm gravitating towards a lot of these ideas and teachings.

Gratitudes of the Day

1. Very grateful to get out with the Prowler this morning and do some pushes and some sledgehammer swings. We also built a makeshift Bulgarian Bag from an inner tube and 37lbs of sand. We hooked a couple carabiners for handle attachments as well so we have a makeshift hammer or weight for distance as well as a core and conditioning toy. I Like!

2. Grateful for the opportunity to sit down with my mom today and have an awesome conversation about the world and where we (collectively, not just she and I) are at. I always looked forward to flying home to see her when she lived in Utah because we would have these deep, meaningful conversations all the time. We'd talk about my dad, she'd tell stories about going to Alaska, I'd regale her with tales of finance (yawn); really special moments to me.

3. I'm grateful for a text a just received from my mom. Friends in Australia just called, said they have a flight for her covered and they want her to come out for a month starting next weekend. A MONTH!!! She's seriously considering a permanent job and moving to Australia and I could not be happier, because that means I have a place to stay in Australia!

Gratitudes of the Day(s)

I slacked last night and did not get my gratitudes done, so today I'm making up for it. This is the last week of this exercise, then we return to regularly scheduled programming.

1. Very grateful for the weather in Denver today. It was around 65 and not a cloud in the sky. Any time you can walk around in shorts and a tshirt in February, that's a damn fine day.

2. Grateful for the massage I got yesterday from my friend Lynda. I don't have anything specifially wrong, was just looking for an all around She is very VERY good with all manner of soft tissue work and massage. If you have some soft tissue hurting, it's a fairly safe bet Lynda can help out. LifeSport Chiropractic is my main clinic for adjustments, rehab and spinal health. I recommend them to any and all athletes as Dr. Lisa works with some of the best in the world. In the same office, I have to also say that Marcos Mejias is the best sports massage therapist that I know. His massages will leave you wincing for days but your body feels brand new.

3. Grateful to have been able to see my friend Rachel off to Africa last night. She's off to work in an HIV clinic for a few months and enter what Mark Twain referred to as "The Territory". I wish her all the best.

4. Grateful to get a sprint and a lift in today. Feels good to run outside in the spikes and I'm hoping that I can do it regularly once the weather officially turns for the better.

5. I am also grateful for the opportunity to get involved with my rugby club, the Denver Barbarians, again. Not in a playing capacity, although that might be an option for summer 7's as long as my shoulder would allow me to tackle. Wait, what am I saying; no one tackles in 7's. ;)  I'm helping out with some of the administrative work that needs to be done behind the scenes as we get into the Super League season. I am very out of the loop with the rugby crowd so this should be challenging and a good time.

6. Grateful for Epsom Salt right now, because my legs are starting to get REAL stiff.

Bonus: I am grateful that this happened.

Gratitudes of the Day

1. Grateful to be spending a chunk of Thursday night listening to this: http://www.npr.org/event/music/147154117/live-thursday-galactic-in-concert-with-the-soul-rebels?ps=mh_frhdl1. They put on an awesome show. Scoring tickets to see them and The Aggrolites on St Patricks Day here in Denver.

2. Grateful for some new reading material that is non-financial in nature. I picked up Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and The Pursuit of Power for some intellectual reading. For some personal and spiritual reading, I picked up Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye. I don't identify/gravitate/follow with any one religion in particular. I've been to sun dances and sweat lodge with many Native American friends, prayed with Tibetan friends and gone to Mass with Catholic friends. If I had to choose, I believe that my personality and beliefs are very Buddhist leaning. I admittedly don't know how the different aspexts of Buddhism (Zen, Tibetan, etc) are differentiated, but I'm reading a bit in a bid to nourish my spiritual side a bit more.

3. I'm grateful that my friend Rachel's Operation Africa Indie-a-GoGo was successfully funded and she'll be heading off to Africa next month to work in an HIV/AIDS clinic. Such a cool story and a fantastic cause for her to take up.

Gratitudes of the Day

1. Very grateful that our head derivatives trader is out this week. The week following Op/Ex has been nice and mellow and gives us a chance to get caught up on some housekeeping items that we don't usually get the chance to bang out. I do miss the trading flow when we get slow like this, but maybe it's the respite that allows us to turn things over the way that we do.

2. Right now, I'm incredibly grateful for the post-workout feast I just knocked down. I really encourage busy professionals to have a look at The Warrior Diet. It synchs up very well with those of us who don't have much free time to eat during the day, or if you don't necessarily WANT to be lugging tupperware around. Hit me up if you'd like some ideas.

3. Grateful I scored some tickets for the Avett Brothers and DeVotchKa at Red Rocks the day before my birthday (June 30). Really looking forward to this show as I've seen DeVotchka many times, but never the Avetts.

Bonus: This is an excellent article from Dan John on Managing Options. I'm a huge proponent of taking training articles (as well as any other specialized articles) and applying them to different disciplines. You start seeing parallels and common denominators if you look for them. I'm also a big believer of Dan's "everything works for about six weeks" philosophy with regards to training.

http://danjohn.net/2012/02/manage-your-options/

Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful that the dishwasher is fixed!

2. Grateful to a friend of mine, who gave me some Teatulia ginger tea a few weeks ago when I was sick. Besides the kindness and compassion (which is always appreciated), this is some damn fine tea! I had to dilute the ginger tea down because it's so strong. Highly recommend it.

3. I think my back is grateful for taking today away from the gym. I tweaked my squat form a bit to emphasize more hamstring/glutes and less quads. With that comes more pressure on the low back as well, so I'm having to set aside a little more time here and there for foam roller, lacrosse ball and some other prehab stuff. All in the name of keeping myself off the surgeon's table (again).

Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful to my mom for the awesome gift of a bunch of lucky bamboo. I'm hoping to pick up some big ones this weekend, and thinking about eventually getting a little goldfish or two to hang out in the bowl. Trying to spruce the place up a bit and add some life.

2. I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to go into work today, while many people had the day off. The more and more I talk to people looking for jobs, the more grateful and fortunate I feel to have the job that I have.

3. I'm very grateful that this is/was a thing.

Gratitudes of the Day

1. Grateful for having some awesome weather in the Mile High this weekend. I got the track spikes out yesterday and today I was walking around in shorts and a sweatshirt; not too shabby for Feb 19th in Colorado!

2. Grateful to have spent the morning working on my broken dishwasher, because good lord that thing was nasty on the inside. After bailing out the standing water (which I almost twitpic'd, but refrained since it was causing me to gag), I took the thing apart and have reached the conclusion that either A. I can't fix a dishwasher B. The pump is broken or C. All of the above. If you answered C, Self High Five.

3. Grateful for a short work day tomorrow. I'm off duty once Europe closes, so that gives me the rest of the day to get to the track and the gym, as well as some fun stuff like track down concert tix. Some really good stuff coming up, like the Avett Bros and Devotchka for one, Henry Rollins for another.

Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful to have this guy around. He brings me an insane amount of laughs.

2. Grateful to Denver Public Schools for opening up the track at North High School to the public. They recently laid down and entirely new SportGrass field as well as a rubberized track, but were keeping it walled off from the public. Now that they're keeping it open as long as there isn't a school event going on, I have someplace to go to get my track spikes out and do some sprint work again. Between that and the rugby pitch at Glendale, what more could I ask for in terms of training spaces?

3. Grateful for the benefit that one of my friends from DU is putting on tonight to raise money for the Lao Buddhist Temple, which burned down in December. Terrible thing to have happen, and since me and the Buddha have a good understanding, I'm heading over to check it out and give some good money to the cause. Please have a look.  http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/307931839258732/

Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful for the upcoming market holiday on Monday. Option expiry has been a brutal one for us, and an extra day to recharge a bit is gonna be excellent. My only fear is that, with the German news that their president is stepping down, a long weekend for US markets is a good time to announce something ridiculous. Plus I get to do all that awesome stuff that doesn't get done during the week, like laundry!

2. Grateful for my training partners for changing my squat form. My squat has started moving again after being stale for about 6 months. Very fulfilling (and slightly weird) to see that moving up as my bodyweight moves down.

3. Grateful to my core group of friends. A friend from work last night said "You have got the weirdest group of friends I have ever seen." I think we should all be so lucky as to have a group of "weird" friends. I count among my closest friends two aerial dance performers, a consultant, a director for the New Teacher Project, two energy traders, a real estate developer, a cleantech startup president, a fashion and makeup blogger, two pro strongmen and an event planner. I like to think that they keep me on my toes because any conversation feels like I'm getting my learn on at the same time. One dimension is fine for cartoons, but you gotta live in three!

Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful to catch up with old friends last night. A friend (well, we dated for a little while) just returned to Denver from two years of living in Amsterdam and we caught up after I finished training last night. We got to swap some war stories and she showed me some cool pics from her time in Europe. For whatever reason, I have a decent-sized list of exs that have stuck around in my life as friends. I'm not sure what that says about me, but I'm sure it says something.

2. I'm grateful for the friends and relationships I've built on Twitter. I'd previously made a conscious effort to pull back a bit from Twitter and Facebook and refocus on the current world. I view it as a personal stream, but it's also an extension of my "brand". When the pendulum swings too far in the "personal" or "professional" directions, I like to shut it down for a little while until my focus returns to center. So you might see me more active on the Twitterz in the future, hopefully for the better!

3. I'm grateful for the last girl I dated and the number that she did on me. No details needed here, but suffice to say that it isn't good. In the past I had just "let things go", but I would still resent people for their behavior and there wouldn't be any closure. I'm (finally) learning in my 31.5yrs walking the Earth that sometimes you need to draw that line in the sand and just say "No, I am not cool with this". Shame it took this long!

3 Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful that my friend Eric's wife was out of town for Valentines Day. Because of this, I got to go to a Great Divide beer dinner hosted by Beatrice and Woodsleys. I'm working with a nutritionist right now and I'm pretty sure beer isn't part of the plan, but this was an opportunity that I felt I couldn't pass up. 12 people and one of the brewers from Great Divide just sitting around, talking food, beer and life. Met some very cool people, ate some insanely good food and drank some phenomenal beers. It was an excellent, excellent night.

2. Incredibly grateful that my back is finally coming around a little. I had microdiscectomy in 2005 and it still gives me an issue or two now and then. I woke up yesterday feeling like my SI joints were totally out of whack, so the order of the day was some foam roller and adjustments. Even after sitting in hard chair for 4 hrs last night, all seems right in the world this morning. Which is good, because tonight's workout is a heavy one.

3. I am incredibly grateful that pictures like this exist in the world.

3 Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful for the kiddos at Judi's House, where I volunteer a couple nights a month. This house is full of some of the most joyful kids you will ever meet, as well as some stories that absolutely break your heart. You want to learn about being joyful and full of life in the face of adversity? These kids have cornered the market.

2. I'm grateful that I've had the means to hire people to write me training and nutrition programs. The productivity and time gains from this (not to mention the big improvements I'm already feeling in body comp and performance) have definitely already paid for themselves. I've written about this in previous blog posts and I HIGHLY encourage anyone to look into online coaching. It is affordabe and easy to seek out the best trainers online so as to avoid ending up with Timmy the Trainer from your local 24 Hr.

3. I'm incredible grateful that the biggest concern on my mind, as I sit and type this, is "What the hell else am I grateful for?". 

Gratefuls of the Day

This is a three week exercise that I picked up from a Ted talk on happiness and work (http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html). I'm writing down three things per day that I'm grateful for in an effort to see if it shifts anything with regards to my thought processes at work. I'm doing this first thing in the AM before I leave for the office.

1. I'm grateful that I got to hang out with my mom yesterday. I did the math on this and I've seen her more times in the last four months than I had in the previous five years.

2. I'm grateful for being able to freeze my ass off at Denver's first ever Cupid's Undie Run this past Saturday. Proceeds benefitted the Children's Tumor Foundation and I think Denver raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-50k. Pics here; I'm told that I'm not in any of them, but I haven't scanned them myself. They are potentially NSFW and absolutely hilarious.

3. I'm grateful for the deliciousness of Novo coffee in my cup this morning. Every few days I brew a french press so I have a cup waiting for me when I first wake up, which is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 430-500am.

More Fun With Math and Online Coaching

To explore the concept of online coaching and time-dollars a bit further, let’s use my previous example (5 hours per week spent planning, time is worth $20/hour):

By hiring an online coach, this is an extra 260 hours per year of time not spent researching and writing your own training/nutrition. Let us suppose that a coach charges $500 for 13 weeks of programming. At the aforementioned $20/hour, it’s going to take you 25 hours of additional work (or $ saving/sacrifice) to afford this plan. In return, you will accrue a net gain of 40 additional hours of your life. 13 weeks is one quarter of a year, and we already established that you are gaining 260 hours per full year. 260*25%=65 hours, 65 minus the 25 extra "hours" you need to work = 40. At $20 per hour, that's an additional $800 time-dollars you've netted.  

To extrapolate: at $2,000 for an entire year of programming you would work an additional 100 hours @ $20/hour (or one extra hour per day for 20 weeks, a half hour per day for 40 weeks, etc). For the commitment of 100 extra hours per year, you receive a full year of programming and a net gain of 160 HOURS OF YOUR LIFE that you aren’t reading, plotting and planning. 160 * $20 = $3,200, or a 61% return. 

At some point, this is no longer a cost effective endeavor. I would argue this, because there are excellent online coaches who are very flexible and work with you on payment plans or reduced rates. But we do need to draw a line somewhere. One way to sort this out, using totally new values:

Let’s say you spend one hour per week (52 hours per year) with programming and your time is worth $20/hr. Your hypothetical annual “budget” is $1,040 or 52 hours. Any total programming that doesn’t break this price point or the number of hours expended is accretive to your life through time-dollar savings. A $1,200 annual plan is a net loss of (15%) in time-dollar terms since you will need to work 15% more hours (60-52/52) and thus “spend” more money (1,200-1040/1040) than you would be saving.

There are some caveats to consider with this math. The less time you already devote to planning nutrition and training, the less you will derive from this activity since you are investing very few time-dollars in the first place. Also: this is purely an exercise regarding planning. I've given no considerations to the actual training/exercise time, nor have I discussed results. I'll save those for later, but I think that is also a compelling argument. I believe the math behind training time may illustrate why Crossfit has such an intriguing value proposition, despite the high "cost" for box membership.

I did all this in a fairly short amount of time, so feel free to check my math and ask me if something seems off; I ALWAYS forget to carry the "1". The point I'm trying to make is this: your time is EXPENSIVE. By putting your time into dollar terms, i'm trying to illustrate the fact that you're spending money every second of every day. A little basic math can help you make choices that offer higher potential returns with lower risk to the downside.