Dad Strength

26/07/2024

Somebody at jiu jitsu today was flexing way too hard.

28/06/2024

The research is in.

22/06/2024

On the most recent Dad Strength call, we shared our practices for long-term health — and described our own role models.

Exercise was, of course, discussed. However, the primary topic was relationships. We talked about how building relationships — both 1-1 and through community — is top-tier stuff. We also realized that men often experience a lot of resistance to doing this. The snake may be devouring its own tail.

What do we do here? Perhaps it starts just by noticing your own internal response to these prompts:

* Check in with a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while

* Find a group oriented around an activity you’re interested in (biking, art, boccie ball, etc)

* Make someone feel welcome in a group you’re already a part of

Going through this list, did things feel like an automatic yes? Or did something pop up to block immediate action. If so, what’s that about?

Curious about what joining the Dad Strength community is like? Would it be good to talk things out? Visit dadstrength.com and click on CALLS to learn more.

21/05/2024

Fitness is like pouring water into a cone. The lower your current level, the faster things fill. This provides a surprising advantage to beginners. Going from low to average is highly accessible — and has an incredible impact. It’s almost the reverse of what many people expect.

As an example, let’s look at V02 max (how much oxygen you can use during exercise) and its impact on your risk of dying prematurely. Going from low to average V02 max is accessible for most people — and it will lower the risk of dying in the next decade by half!

For those who don’t have the time or energy to get from low to average — perhaps 2.5 hours a week — chopping the commitment in half will still provide *most* of that benefit. And if 1.25 hours is too much, the formula holds true. Each step forward — no matter how tiny — is disproportionately valuable.

Chasing marginal gains is for elite athletes. It’s cool but optional. However, beginners are the ones who benefit the most — and by a huge margin.

02/05/2024

"Prioritizing ideas that exist outside of the body is a distraction from the workout, Sam.”

Coming up on today's edition of The Dad Strength Newsletter.

18/04/2024

Tonight on with

16/04/2024

Who are your male role models?

05/04/2024

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14/03/2024

New episode: Fighting, Families, and Forgiveness with Morgan Campbell

https://share.transistor.fm/s/b355543e

17/01/2024

Success is a product of your actions but your actions are the result of your physical, social, and internal environments.

When you design these intentionally, your highest actions become default settings.

These thoughts come from the most recent Dad Strength call. Link in bio.

11/01/2024

I let Miles prompt ChatGPT and some pretty good things happened.

09/01/2024

Home edition

01/01/2024

Happy New Year, friends

29/12/2023

I appreciate and recommend subscribing to him. He’s one of the most educated guys in the industry and has zero pretention. Here, he deconstructs an appealing but inaccurate claim that is making the rounds. you can probably go by feel on this one. If Late eating doesn’t mess with your digestion, it’s probably just fine.

Why is it important to pull these things apart? IWhen we make up rules about what doesn’t work, It discourages and overwhelms many of the people who are doing a perfectly good job. it adds noise to an already overcomplicated landscape.

Not eating late may totally be a good idea for you. However, that’s because it’s a simple rule that will organize your eating, not because of some sort of biological law. If you're a late snacker who would benefit from simpler rules and less decision-making, I think you should run this as a small experiment. However, if you’re eating late and it feels good, you are absolutely fine. you can tick this box and move on to something that has greater value for you.

20/12/2023

Expert jiu-jitsu coach, , recently shared his thoughts on how sports psychology is a waste of time because words fail upon impact with the physical world. Let me tell you a story about sport psychology and words. And jiu-jitsu, while we’re at it.

I was a small kid but I made up for it by being wildly uncoordinated and generally just not tough at all. I was a triple threat (to myself).

Looking back, I realize that I never gave myself the chance to be tough. I just figured that I’d wilt under any kind of pressure. So, when I dipped my toes in the water of Brazilian jiu-jitsu back around 2005, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t want to run screaming out of the building. I liked it and tolerated its rich tapestry of discomforts. The things that frustrated other people didn’t get to me. I was just happy to be there.

Later, I was taken aback again training partners started to say things like, “You’ve got a lot of heart.” I heard that one a lot. BJJ has generated an incredible lexicon of back-handed compliments, so let me translate this one for you. It means, “You are really stubborn.” An alternative translation is, “I am more athletic and better at jiu jitsu than you. How you survived is a mystery.”

I also heard, “You’re very strong,”, which means that you’re stubborn, lack technique, and are en route to injury. For the record, “You’ve got great cardio” means, “I would have submitted you if I hadn’t just come back from vacation.”

In time, I continued to progress in ways that I never could have expected. I even took gold in my first tournament (my only ever gold) by beating someone who was technically and athletically superior to me. How? By grinding them down.

I didn’t believe I was tough. You could never have convinced me with words. It literally had to be beaten into me. now I have the words to describe this to myself in my moments of doubt.

What experiences have transformed you? My DMs are open.

19/12/2023

Many dads are struggling to balance traditional vs. modern definitions of toughness.

Dads feel social pressure to maintain a facade of unflappable strength and confidence—and the ability to shoulder stress without any outward sign of strain. They may fear that showing vulnerability or emotional depth might be perceived as weakness—by their partners, peers, or even children.

Yet, those feelings exist. So, how do we handle these feelings internally AND manage them in a way that is healthy for ourselves and for our families?

How do we discipline effectively and balance demanding work with the desire to be present and involved at home?

How do we work toward being more of who we are—and who we want to be?

The answer is a paradox: true toughness comes from being sensitive to our experiences. The hiker who notices and immediately removes a pebble from their shoe will go further than the one who tries to ignore it.

When we take care of our health, that means responding to emotions and stresses swiftly and adaptively, as well as communicating our needs. This is how we get ahead of most crises. And – when we can’t – find ourselves more equipped to deal with them.

Ultimately, we become more rooted in the current moment by being capable of welcoming experiences... Even the tough ones.

10/11/2023

One of our dads was a being bit sheepish. He hadn’t been on the calls lately because he was going through some things. “I don’t want to monopolize the conversation,” he said.

One thing about a well-functioning community is that sometimes you contribute to its resources and sometimes you draw from them. There is a balance, to be sure, but no community can function without both of these roles fulfilled.

To him, this challenge was something nobody else could relate to or understand. He was wrong, though; all of us could. I'm telling you this because there is a very good chance that whatever you feel alone about is something universal. And when you share it, you not only feel less alone, you help others feel less alone. This is one of the hardest—and the best—things that you can do.

These thoughts are based on our most recent weekly call.

Want to join the conversation?
Visit www.dadstrength.com

01/11/2023

30/10/2023

As a dad to an elementary school kid, I think a lot about what the future of education is. Especially since it's possible—even now—to turn out a plausible looking essay with this round of AI tech.

I don't believe the answer lies in stricter rules. That idea lands about as well as my memory of a junior high math teacher telling me that I won't have a pocket calculator with me wherever I go.

I believe that the answer lies in discernment. Do you know what you want? I mean, really know?

To me, the current round of AI is like an MVP for the Star Trek replicator. "Cold, hard cash."; "Earl Grey, hot." These are both prompts.

Before we advance enough to deal with with physical objects, though, we have to master information. "500 words on Omar Khayyam, playful." "Change the transmission fluid in a 1970 El Camino, explain it like I'm 8."

The question will no longer be, "Can you write an essay?" It may not even be, "Can you follow the rules convincingly?" It will more likely be, "What do you really, really care about learning—and how will YOU know that you have met your own objectives."

As parents, I suspect that one of the greatest ways we can support kids is to continuously explore what is important to them—and what standards they (not us) have for those objectives. In an era where it's continually easier to fake things, the million dollar question will be where and when it's personally worth doing things the hard way.

30/10/2023

Discernment

25/10/2023

Dress for the job you want.

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Every week, I condense an hour's worth of dad wisdom into a 30-second read and include quick insights on fitness, focus, and fatherhood.

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11/10/2023

Yesterday, as I walked my son to school, we talked about the noise of the city and how some structures were designed to dampen it. He wasn't buying it; things sounded pretty loud to him. I told him that we'd need a regular wall to compare that one to. This was a great opportunity to describe the value of a control group in research This felt like Grade-A parenting to me and I watched the gears turn behind my son's eyes with a sense of pride. Finally, he looked up at me and said, "Dad, who do you think would win in a fight, Ryu or Scorpion?"

At any given time, you're processing some ideas Health habits, perhaps. Work challenges. Mindfulness. Who can say? These tend to dominate our awareness and work their way into the way we parent via recency bias. But what we're processing may not be the same as what our kids are processing. Different ages, different stages. It's important to remember that gaps and return to their world. Even more than that, it's essential to clarify that Ryu would win.

08/10/2023

Take a breath and stretch things out for a moment Find a position you haven't explored for a while.

Physical sensation is a conduit to the present... Our most reliable pathway to figuring out when Right Now is happening.

Consider all of the positions your body is capable of getting into... The full spectrum of physical experience. Now map those out across a typical day. What does the distribution look like?

For most of us, sitting is a hot spot and the further reaches of flexibility, velocity, and even temperature are far cooler—trailing from greens to blues. It makes you want to run for the mountains, sometimes. Yet overhaul is a big ask. So, while you contemplate big, dramatic changes, the real question is this:

With what you've got, as you are right now, how can you expand your daily movement experience?

06/10/2023

The trouble with tough love

I’ve spoken with a lot of men who have struggled to find a consistent approach to their own exercise and nutrition habits. The cycle is the same. Things get busy, healthy and habits fall away. They are aware of an internal discomfort but not yet responsive to it. It’s like a subtle alarm in the background. It’s easy to ignore at first but it gathers volume over time. It’s only when the signal gets loud enough that motivation finally reaches a critical threshold. Here, an internal editor cues the Rocky theme and things get moving. Sometimes dramatically so.

The motivation behind this type of action is fundamentally human; it’s to get out of pain. The problem is that it only lasts as long as that alarm is blaring. As guys begin to get traction and hit their stride, they often find their motivations fade away. After all, there’s no more pain to get out of. So, things begin to slip and the cycle begins again.

Maybe it’s not tough love we need, so much of a love of process. A love of how we feel about ourselves. A love of doing challenging things because of what it means to us. And maybe it’s a purpose that we need to tie all that stuff together—something bigger than our own lives… Something that will really last.

this is an excerpt from the most recent dad strength newsletter. For more, check out

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03/10/2023

To be a parent in 2023 is to feel some kind of tension when it comes to screen time. You have likely heard about how tech moguls zealously restrict access for their kids. You have also seen kids parked in front of devices in restaurants, family gatherings, and Hootie and the Blowfish concerts. Some of them are going to make it; they'll be ok. The truth is that parents have a rich history of overreacting. It's part of our brand.

For context, here are some other things that we've freaked out about:

* Jazz music

* Comic books

* Re**er madness

* Satanism

* Dungeons & Dragons

* Rock 'n roll

* Gangster rap

* Autism from vaccines

* Violent video games

* Drag queens

The list goes on. There have some far more serious issues to kids as well—real ones. So, it's not to say that we shouldn't worry. Our job is to worry. And it's not to say that screens and social media aren't different. They certainly have been engineered to that way. However...

Coming from a health perspective, I have never found it productive to overly focus on junk food, alcohol and recreational drugs, or other existential threats to adults. Instead, I ask questions about whether folks are getting enough nutrients, exercise, sleep, outdoor time, and time spent with supportive people. No amount of restriction can make up for deficits in the good stuff. I believe that this same approach works for kids. So, should we panic? Should birds stop singing or fish stop swimming? It's not a serious question. However, when we do panic we should do so calmly—and without forgetting about big picture health.

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To take part in discussions like this, check out https://dadstrength.com/ -calls

26/09/2023

Dads, when we talk about giving our kids the things we never had, make sure that your presence is part of the equation.

Research claims children whose fathers read and play with them see a ‘small but significant’ increase in their educational attainment