Wake Up Journal / 5:AM - Quitting Caffeine ⏰

[fridjonk]

Yesterday I dusted off the good ol' running shoes and went for a night run with my friend. The weather was incredible, fully star-lit sky and unbelievable aurora. Made me think back to the 5 AM running and so here we are. I'm going to try and restart that habit once again, as well as quitting caffeine. I've been consuming way too much of it lately and can feel it's impacting my sleep. I'll likely slowly start waking up sooner and will log it down here daily.

I don't know if it will be too much with all the calisthenics I'm doing, so we shall see.

[fridjonk]

7:00 AM

Didn't manage to fall asleep until 2 AM so waking up at 5 was out of the picture. I did take a cold shower however and that woke me right up. I'm starting a new construction job today and am very excited about that. Let's get that 5 AM run tomorrow. 

[fridjonk]

6:50 AM

This new job is incredibly physically demanding so I didn't run this morning.  But I will likely start to run once I'm a little in routine and more used to it. 

[fridjonk]

After taking two weeks off from working out, I reaped the benefits of the two months I did train. I've now reached a full superman pushup and L-sit for 20 sec. Amazing how much I've improved by doing nothing, by letting the muscles and joints really relax, and giving them time to rebuild. And the same went for the side-split, I reached further down than I've ever reached, by resting the stretching. I highly recommend a de-load week and will be continuing to do them every two months. 

[ertopolice]

following..

i quitted caffeine too

[fridjonk]

On 3/4/2021 at 10:25 PM, ertopolice said:

i quitted caffeine too

Awesome! how's it been going?

 

Took the best cold shower I've possibly ever done tonight. I managed to completely let go of the cold like never before and it was amazing. I thought I had learned to let go of the cold but there must've been some hidden tension because this time I completely let go and it felt so normal that it was like the cold was all I ever knew. It wasn't uncomfortable anymore, it just was. There was no heavy or fast breathing, as a matter of fact, it was extremely slow and controlled like I had been meditating for an hour. Ended up staying under for 10 minutes. I'll try again tomorrow to see if I can reach this level of relaxation and acceptance.  

[fridjonk]

I feel like I've mastered the cold now after taking cold showers now on and off for about 3 years. I've reached a point where I honestly and actually love the cold, without hesitation. There's not even the slightest reaction to it being something that's uncomfortable like most of us have looked at the cold all our lives. Yet I also feel like a total beginner. The cold is one of the greatest teachers you can adopt to your life, it teaches you how to accept and let go. The more you fight back, the worse experience it becomes. 

I remember when I was first starting my cold shower journey. I'd blast some dubstep, electric, and epic orchestral music like I was preparing for war. I now see how much of a fool's approach that was but a valuable lesson. Tensing up and making it an ego trip made for an unsustainable practice in the long run.

I'm also on no PMO right now, day 7. It's been easier than ever and it may be due to the discipline the cold showers have given. I really can't wait for the water fast I'll be starting on Monday, it will result in a rock-solid discipline combined with cold showers and no PMO, and a potent spiritual retreat as well.  

[Michael569]

10 hours ago, fridjonk said:

The more you fight back, the worse experience it becomes.

This is EXACTLY what I've observed this morning. The more I "dance"and the more I move around the more uncomfortable it gets but once you take control of your breathing and actually go through the experience fully, it becomes more tolerable. 

[fridjonk]

@Michael569 I usually try and stay still as if I'm meditating at first to totally surrender and accept it. Then after 2 minutes of that, I find I can easily move around without resistance because at that point the cold feels like lukewarm water, even though my body is bright red, lol. And that's relativity pure as water, once the body has cooled down, cold stops being cold.  

[fridjonk]

So I just finished up stretching by following this video below. And what I've discovered is my biggest weakness is by far my hips. I could barely walk after this session it felt like so much tension was let out that I had no strength left. My hamstring progression has been great and all the rest as well. But I've also noticed that my calves are hindering some progress from how stiff they are. I'll be following this program 3 times a week if I can handle it, else 2 should do it. I really want to reach the full pancake split, probably more than the side split, but I set my goal for that at the beginning of the year and so I'll keep following it, even though it's almost the same stretch, so it doesn't really matter which one I focus on.

 

[fridjonk]

We've been bombarded with snow here today and so I went out in my shorts and took a dive into it. I buried myself under for about 2 minutes then went in for a cold shower. It was the easiest cold shower I've ever taken, the snow was that cold. I'm going to make this a tradition, every time it snows as much as now, I'm taking a dive.  

[fridjonk]

Watched these two documentaries last night and enjoyed them thoroughly. I'd never really seen Tysons career in its entirety until now and man was he unbelievably incredible. In his prime, I'd consider him the greatest of all time, same as I hold Kobe as the greatest at his peak. But career-wise, Floyd is likely the best ever. Anyways, the dedication to mastery really shows in these documentaries. Floyd basically lived in the gym his entire life, literally, he'd spend 8-10 hours in the gym every day of his professional career. Just fascinating and it shows that to become the best ever in a certain thing, it must consume your entire life. But becoming the best ever at something is only an ego game, which is the opposite of consciousness work. Value over status. 

Yet when we come to higher consciousness creative ways of achieving mastery, you can't really grind it out like in sports. Mastery in sports is largely grinding it out, repetition repetition, time spent on craft. And at the highest level, it becomes about leadership and self-control as well. 

Which is good in all aspects of mastery, but more creative work requires sometimes less grind, less intensity, more letting go, etc. 

Balancing from both worlds is the goal. The more spiritual you become, the less you tolerate bullshit and falsehood. Which makes it hard to do something well you don't like to do. But that's where the Zen disciplined mind comes in handy. When washing dishes, wash dishes! Do it totally intensely like you were made for that purpose. The way nature intended for you to do, the way legs were intended for you to walk, with nothing in return. In that way you become present, you stop resisting, and you start enjoying more mundane things. 

[fridjonk]

I've drastically reduced my workout days the last 3 weeks, from 6 days to about 2-3 times a week. It's very noticeable the benefit you get from resting more. I feel like the muscles have more time to grow and rebuild themselves this way. And especially when doing harder calisthenics exercises like scapular retraction pushups. I notice how much larger my muscles are when they get to rest which is a nice bonus, you get to see all the work you've put in. 

I've now been doing the 18/6 fasting for quite a while, some days 20/4 actually, and usually 2 meals a day to drop some weight as I still feel like I'm too heavy for some calisthenics moves. I'm currently 86-87 after a full day of eating and 85 fasted. I'd love to get down to around 83 fasted and 85 full. I listened to George St Pierre on Rogan's podcast a little while ago and he talked about how much dead weight he was carrying so he did one meal a day and carnivore diet to lose it. I feel I'm in the same boat, I'd love to feel lighter on my toes and keep the strength. 

In order to drop the dead weight, I'm going to start the Mike Chang flow workout once again in order to burn more calories and to feel better as well. I've never felt as good as when I was doing the flow practice daily. I'll likely do push, pull, and legs once a week instead of twice, and flow practice in between, 2-3 times a week. 

More is not better. 

[flume]

On 29/04/2021 at 4:37 PM, fridjonk said:

Mike Chang flow workout

Goodness me! I just tried this. When he said "Ok, second round" I was like WHAT! Crazy stuff. Such a friendly, grounded and easy going guy though. Made me feel really good to hear him talk about the way he relates to and appreciates his body. We need more people like that. May I suggest something a little more gentle but totally awesome as well? Maybe for a rest day?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5kgE1Q51M0

[fridjonk]

3 hours ago, flume said:

Goodness me! I just tried this. When he said "Ok, second round" I was like WHAT!

Haha! That's hilarious.  

Gotta love Mike.

3 hours ago, flume said:

May I suggest something a little more gentle but totally awesome as well? Maybe for a rest day?

I'll give this a shot on a rest day, thanks. 

I've noticed when I'm doing yoga or stretching that I have the tendency to hold my breath which makes it all the more painful. I'm now always constantly reminding myself to let go, to breathe into the stretch. 

[fridjonk]

One of the most underrated things in life I've come to find is taking a 10-minute walk after a big meal. I've gotten so used to sit down after meals, and having no energy for the next two hours. I'm on a "semi"-"bulk" at the moment, so I'm eating a little more calories and a lot more protein. Taking a brisk walk has changed my energy levels completely after a meal. 

[ryangold]

Oh man caffeine I've been trying to quit for so long as well haha. Inspiration to us both  .

[fridjonk]

I've now been lifting intensely for the past 3 weeks, following a good and healthy diet. After I've gotten into the groove a little and focusing solely on musclebuilding and pretty much ignoring cardio and stretching, but I've been lifting so furiously that it's been cardio as well because of the short resting time. I'll now be stretching more regularly throughout the day and doing more cardio as well. I did a 40-minute rope skipping session today which absolutely drenched me with sweat and endorphins, felt like being on MDMA. Followed by stretching while listening to Mike Chang talk about the importance of it. 

Stretching is not only to let go of tension to prevent injury. It connects with your whole emotional center, where stress and unconscious habits get stored. Stretching lets all the tension go and detoxes your mind and body. Mike talked about not stretching to uncomfortable levels which I'm prone to do from time to time, thinking it will yield "better results" when it has nothing to do with results at all. It should feel comfortable and relaxing with the occasional push to a 6-7 on the pain scale, 5 being comfortable. 

I'm eating at about 100-300 calorie surplus currently. With the intention of slowly dialing it down while keeping the protein intake high, as Jeff from Athlean-X suggests. I wanted to start at a surplus to have enough energy with the workouts I'm doing, and it's felt great so far. I don't like the idea of a "bulk" and a "cut", and believe you can easily build muscle while at maintenance calories as long as the protein intake is high enough.

I've also been tracking all my macros and using an app to log everything down. This is one thing I wish I had done in my earlier weight-lifting days. You're not blindly guessing what's working and what's not. One thing is I eat a lot of natural peanut butter because of how easy it is to consume, filled with protein and calories. But this has lead me to eat over 100g of fat per day easily which is the limit. This is fine since my carbs are usually way below what's recommended. I'm actually surprised how hard it is to hit 400g of carbs a day and feel like it's totally overshooting it. And I'm not afraid of fats either, I really like them as an energy source, for hormone balance and brain function. 

So let's see where this all goes. 

Edited August 29, 2021 by fridjonk

[fridjonk]

I'm a full-on caffeine junkie at the moment and can barely get a workout in without some of that good good. It's such a dilemma, I either quit and have no motivation to work out, or if I do, go about it half-assed as possible, or taper off slowly. I've usually liked the cold turkey method more. But it often comes with the price of the first 1-4 days being miserable, no motivation, and quite depressive even. I'll either have to pick this slow taper of method or by taking an off week from working out and just stretch. I'm on a decent momentum at the moment so I'm not quite ready for that option as of now. 

Perhaps logging down my daily caffeine intake here will keep me accountable for actually following through. It's funny how much I fluctuate in my caffeine addiction. In July I took 30 days off no problem, but now it seems so hard to start again. 

Today I've drunk around 400mg. Let's not go above 200 tomorrow as a start. Then 150 the next day, then 100, and so on. 

Lately, I've been really missing my 5 am morning runs. It's around this time a year ago where I started the 5 am runs, inspired by David Goggins of course. But it would not help a whole lot with the weight lifting, yet I question, wouldn't it be much better to feel better than to look better? Of course! So I may soon pick that up after this little hiatus. But I'm sticking with the lifting a little longer, then I may start including runs with it.

Edited September 1, 2021 by fridjonk