- Part 2

January 26, 2017 By Jack Jones Leave a Comment

Life is Cyclical – Trust the Process

In two days I will have been exactly two months since I’ve finished thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail and I’ve been struggling with energy and motivation. Struggling to do anything at all productive.

I’m slightly concerned that I may have picked up Lyme disease. It’s hard to differentiate the symptoms of Lyme with those caused by long-distance hiking. More likely this is a combination of extreme over-training, winter, and possibly some vitamin/mineral deficiencies.

There isn’t much I can do except to rest and to heal. To do what I can and not beat myself up for not doing more. That’s what I want to write about here – this idea of going with the flow. Of trusting the process.

Nature never hurries

I came across a piece of graffiti in Vermont that said something to the effect of “nature never hurries yet it gets everything done.” I often reflect upon that phrase. I think the spontaneous nature of Nature really is amazing. How without seeming to try it can accomplish so much. Seeds grow into giant trees. Small streams cut deep gorges. There’s a process at work in Nature. It can’t be rushed. It won’t be stopped. It is.

What I’ve felt in the last eight weeks could easily be characterized as depression except that I don’t really feel depressed. I’m tired and unproductive. I’m sleeping sometimes 12 hours a day. Even simple tasks like exercise are beyond my ability some days. But I don’t feel depressed.

Weird right? How can I have all of the symptoms of depression and yet not feel depressed? I think a key is that my hike deeply ingrained the idea of “trust the process.”

Because even though I’ve been tired and unproductive for two months now I trust that this is all part of a larger process and a larger cycle. And as part of a cycle and process this means that it’s not permanent. That my energy and motivation will come back. And that at the end of this cycle I will be able to look back and see that it was completely necessary in order to push me toward a direction that I may not have otherwise moved toward.

And so with this understanding I’m able to avoid that hopelessness which is a hallmark of periods of depression I’ve had in the past.

Life is not random

This must have been early November, a Monday, when I hiked down Leigh Gap into Palmerton, PA. It was a long day – I did about 19 miles and I got into town at 7:30pm, well past sunset. My plan was to eat and stay the night at Bert’s Steakhouse. They allow hikers to sleep in the garage next to their restaurant. Unbeknownst to me their hours had changed and they now closed at 2pm on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Crap. It’s 8pm. I still need to eat and resupply. So I probably can’t get out of town until 10pm. Then it’s another three miles to the next shelter. So I’m looking at a really late night walking in the dark and cold. This time of the year the temperatures at night are dipping to the mid 20s.

There’s no point in fighting against reality. So I made peace with the situation and went off in search of dinner. On the way I came across the Palmerton Hotel and thought “great, a hotel, I’ll see if they have any rooms.” So, I don’t know why, but the Palmerton Hotel is actually only a restaurant. They don’t have any rooms. Whatever. I’ll just get food here and then buy groceries and hike out.

As I order a man approaches me and asks if I’m a hiker. We talk a little bit and he invites me to his table where he’s having dinner with this wife and a co-worker. Turns out that he’s planning to thru-hike the trail in 2017 and starts peppering me with questions. To keep this story short – he buys me dinner and some beers and invites me to stay at his house. I get a nice warm bed, a shower, and his wife even made me breakfast in the morning and took me by a grocery store before dropping me off at the trailhead.

This is just one of a hundred different stories I have of synchronicity that I experienced on the trail. I’ve said for years now that there are no coincidences in life. But I don’t know if I truly believe or even knew what I was saying. Maybe I was only repeating a phrase that sounded good.

After hiking the trail I really understand deep down in my core that there are no coincidences. And I believe that if we’re open and receptive that life or the universe or God or Vishnu or whoever will provide us with exactly what we need when we need it.

This gives me peace. It allows me to relax and trust the process. Things will pick up when they need to pick up. For now, I’m playing a lot of video games and reading books and it’s great.

April 7, 2016 By Jack Jones Leave a Comment

5 Tips to Build Big Strong Legs

“How do I grow my legs?” I get this question a lot. Having big legs is cool. It makes you stand out. There’s something inherently impressive when you see a guy pull 400+ pounds from the ground. And it’s functional. Strong legs are useful. I just helped a friend move a 240lb gun-safe to his upstairs apartment. It’s just cool to be able to do things like this in your day-to-day without a second thought.

1. Squat and deadlift!

I find a combination of heavy 5 rep sets followed by lighter sets of 8-12 to be the sweet spot for growing my legs and it’s a good place to start for a beginner. Over time you’ll find what works best for you. Some people grow better with lots of high reps. Some people do better with low-reps. All depends on the distribution of your type 1 and type 2 fibers.

You’ll hate it in the beginning. I dreaded leg day for a year after I finally started getting serious about growing my legs. But over time that dread turned into a passion and now leg day is my favorite day. Stick with it. Once you start to see results you’ll be hooked.

2. Squat ATG!

ATG means ass to grass. You need to drop down and achieve a full range of motion in your squats. A quarter squat is useless. You’re only activating your quads and even then you’re barely activating them. If you’re going to spend the time to go to the gym and squat then do it right. A full range of motion squat activates not only your quads but your glutes and your hamstrings – which make up almost 2/3rds of the mass of your legs!

3. Squeeze your butt when you deadlift.

When you deadlift concentrate on squeezing your butt. The lift starts with your glutes. You should feel your glutes contract first to initiate the pull and it should feel like you’re pulling the bar up off the ground using your glutes.

Beginners always try to lift the bar off the ground with their lower-back. This can lead to injury and it is simply less efficient. You’ll pull less weight and your legs won’t grow as fast. The deadlift is primarily a glute and hamstring exercise. Not a lower-back exercise.

4. Incorporate time under tension techniques.

Here’s a in-depth article on time under tension if you want to learn more. In a nut-shell if you spend more time in the concentric and eccentric phases of your lifts then you will see more muscle growth. So to apply this to growing your legs you can add a few sets of slower squats and slower deadlifts. For example when I’m working out for mass I’ll add 1-2 sets of 12 rep squats to the end of my workout(usually after I’ve done a 5×5 or 5×3 set of squats). With these 12 rep squats I’ll lower the weight and slow down my temp. So instead of taking 3-4 seconds in the eccentric phase(down) and 1-2 seconds in the concentric phase(up) I will instead take roughly 5 seconds to go down and another 5 seconds to come back up. Also instead of locking out at the top of the squat and resting for 1-2 seconds I will immediately go into the next rep while maintaining tension in my legs. This turns the 12 reps into essentially one very long, very painful rep.

Pavel Tsatsouline has a good series of articles on using time under tension principles to build more mass here.

5. Eat big to get big.

If you’re doing all of the above and not seeing results then most likely you’re not eating enough. During my freshman year of college at the age of 18 I gained 15 pounds in a little over nine months. My bench press went from 200lbs to 250lbs and my squat went from a piddly 135lbs to 225lbs. In that time I stuffed my face at every opportunity. I would go to the dining hall four times a day and eat until I wanted to throw up.

Plan to get roughly 1g/lb of bodyweight in protein. So if you weighed 150lbs you’d want to get 150g of protein in a day. Then eat carbs until you can’t eat anymore. Don’t worry about fat – you’ll get plenty of fat from regular meals. Rice, lentils, pasta, and potatoes will be your go-to staples.

April 1, 2016 By Jack Jones Leave a Comment

Time Under Tension to Build Muscle – 10 Minute At Home Workout No Equipment Required

In this article will explain the concept of time under tension, why it’s important for building muscle mass, and how you can use it in a quick 10 minute routine at home to build strength and mass in your whole body.

The 10 minute workout:

60-90 seconds of squats
60-90 seconds of push-ups
60-90 seconds of planks
Repeat until you hit 10 minutes.

The key is to maintain tension throughout the entire duration of each exercise. When you’re doing your squats you want to focus on squeezing your butt, squeezing your quads, and squeezing your hamstrings. It should feel like your legs are screwdrivers and you’re constantly trying to rotate your legs and push through the floor. Here’s a more detailed explanation for how you should be squatting.

Same with push-ups. Squeeze your pecs and your triceps and at no time during the 60-90 seconds do you release that tension. Not at the top(don’t transfer the load from your muscles onto your joints by locking out) and not at the bottom(don’t let yourself rest on the floor). Your pecs and your triceps need to be constantly squeezed the whole time.

And again same concept with the planks. Squeeze your whole body. Everything should be tense. If you’re doing it right you should be shaking.

What is time under tension and why does it matter?

Time under tension is the amount of time your muscle stays tensed under a load(barbell or your bodyweight). If you’re doing a bench press and it takes you 4 seconds to lower the barbell and 2 seconds to push the barbell back up then your total time under tension was 6 seconds. The idea of time under tension training is to increase that time. So instead of a 4 second eccentric phase you’d increase that to 8-10 seconds and increase your concentric phase to again 8-10 seconds. If you’re watching someone do this it would look like they’re lifting in slow motion.

Here’s a study from the Exercise Metabolism Research group in Ontario, Canada:

We report that leg extension exercise at 30% of the best effort (which is a load that is comparatively light), with a slow lifting movement (6 s up and 6 s down) performed to fatigue produces greater increases in rates of muscle protein synthesis than the same movement performed rapidly (1 s up and 1 s down). These results suggest that the time the muscle is under tension during exercise may be important in optimizing muscle growth; this understanding enables us to better prescribe exercise to those wishing to build bigger muscles and/or to prevent muscle loss that occurs with ageing or disease. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3285070/

Research studies do show that decreasing the load and increasing the time it takes for an athlete to complete a rep does seem to increase protein synthesis(muscle growth). Now how much it increases, and whether switching to a complete time under tension training method is superior – that’s all up for debate. Trainers have taken this concept of time under tension and turned it into all sorts of “fitness revolutions” that are supposed to change the way we workout and increase our results a hundred fold. I think most of this is bullshit hype to sell books. Because if lifting super light weights for 60-90 seconds was superior then all the elite athletes would be training this way. And of course elite athletes aren’t doing that. They’re lifting heavy, with high volume, following the same simple principles of periodization and progressive overload.

So with that said I still think time under tension is an important principle to understand. Especially because it can be deployed in a traditional program that has you lifting heavy with incremental increases in volume. And also time under tension is beneficial because it forces you to consciously focus on activating all of your muscle groups. Not activating the correct muscle groups was a HUGE problem that I saw when I was running my CrossFit gym. Across the board beginners were using compensatory muscles and generally performing lifts without fully activating the muscle groups that they were supposed to activate. This can lead to injury, poor mechanics, and overall less effective workouts.

For example when people squat for the first time they are almost always quad dominant. This leads them pitch forward thus putting more strain on the knees. It also means that they’re under-activating their glutes and hamstrings and not getting the full benefit of the exercise.

Alright we’re getting too into the weeds there. Let’s get back to time under tension and how you can use it to help grow bigger, stronger, faster.

We know that increasing our time under tension does tend to help muscle growth. But we don’t want to take the concept to the extreme and lift extremely light weights for insane periods of time either. Because people have tried it, and their results have sucked. Like most things in life we get the best results when we find a happy medium.

So how can we use the time under tension concept to our benefit?

Consciously squeeze your muscles on every lift, every time. When I squat I am consciously squeezing my glutes, my core, my hamstrings, and my quads. Think about what muscles should be activated and consciously squeeze them.
Build in high rep lifts to the end of your workouts. Take legs – my favorite leg hypertrophy workout is to do 5×5 heavy squats followed by 3 sets of 12 with lighter weight. In those 3 sets of 12 I will follow a 4-0-4 tempo. That means I lower the weight for 4 seconds, have no rest at the bottom, and immediately drive up for 4 seconds to complete the rep.
During your hypertrophy sets(these would be your low weight, high rep sets) don’t allow tension to release after each rep. Take bench-press. Most people will tend to lock out at the top of the rep and allow their chest and triceps to momentarily relax before starting another rep. Don’t do this. Maintain tension in your pecs and triceps for the entire 8-12 reps. This will likely mean that you need to reduce the weight but that’s okay because you’ll get more benefit.
Consider adding 1-2 super slow reps to the end of a hypertrophy set. For example if I’m doing a set of squats with 135lbs I may do 12 at a normal tempo and then finish it out with two super slow reps where I’ll take 6 seconds to drop down into the squat and another 6 seconds to come back up.

There you have it. Let me know if you have any questions.

February 25, 2016 By Jack Jones 2 Comments

Path of Exile New Player Quick Start Guide – Ascendancy Patch 2.2

Getting started in Path of Exiles can be tough but it’s well worth the time-investment. PoE is by far the most rewarding ARPG on the market precisely because of its steep learning curve and challenging game mechanics. It reminds me of Ultima Online and Everquest – games where decisions were meaningful and dying was a big deal.

I’ve put together this guide to help new players learn the most important game mechanics.

New Player Friendly Builds

Following a tested build is the most important decision to achieve success in PoE. I would not recommend creating your own build until you’ve played to end-game with at least one character. There are too many interactions between skills, passives, and items for a new player to navigate.

Righteous Fire Totem Marauder

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1510181/page/1

Similar to the Righteous Fire Totem Templar below the Marauder benefits from the new Ascendancy Chieftan class which will make your totems tankier and immune to fire damage. This is the build I’ll be starting off with in the new challenge league because you don’t rely on having a great weapon for your DPS.

Tornado Shot Ranger

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1041989/page/1

It’s really easy to play and cheap to gear up. You’ll be able to kill most monsters before they get to you and with the hatred aura(think buff) you can keep groups of mobs permanently frozen. Play this build if you prefer an archer themed character.

Crit Arc Witch

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1147951

Another easy to play build. The skill Arc automatically targets enemies and will chain(hit additional enemies) after hitting your primary target. Gear is cheap and leveling is easy. Play this build if you prefer a spellcaster themed character.

Dual Righteous Fire Totem Templar

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1510181

This is a “set it and forget it” build. Curse your enemies and then cast totems. The totems kill everything. Pick up the loot. Move on. Cheap to gear and level. Play this build if you prefer a shaman type playstyle where you wear heavier armor and wield melee weapons.

Two Hand Cyclone Marauder

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1302337

This plays like the Barbarian whirlwind builds of D2. A little more difficult to play than the previous three builds mostly because you’re melee rather than ranged and PoE has quite a lot of nasty minions and effects which are more easily dodged by the ranged classes. Great option if you enjoy playing melee characters, using huge 2 handed weapons, and wearing heavy armor.

How to Accumulate Currency

First here are important tools you should use:

Loot filters. A loot filter is a simple text file that you put into your PoE documents folder. This is important – it does not go into the installed game’s directory but rather your PoE folder in MyDocuments > My Games > Path of Exile. A loot filter will change the way drops are displayed in your game – highlighting items that you should keep. ZiggyD has a great write-up on loot filters you can check out here: http://ziggyd.tv/featured/ziggyds-loot-filter/
Poe.trade – poe.trade is a website that makes it easy to search for gear upgrades. As a rule of thumb while leveling up I don’t spend anymore than 1 chaos for leveling upgrade items.
Acquisition – You can download Acquisition here – https://github.com/xyzz/acquisition/releases Acquisition is a tool to help you sell your loot to other players. Stay away from trade chat. It’s really difficult to sell anything there and most of the time you’ll get ripped off. Acquisition allows you to put items you want to sell into your stash and then it will generate a forum shop thread for you. The forum shop threads are what Poe.trade crawls to update their website. Once you have Acquisition set up correctly your items will automatically be listed on Poe.trade and people will whisper you in-game and buy your stuff while you play without you having to spend time advertising in trade chat. Here’s a video for setting up Acquisition quickly.

Knowing what to pick up and what to save is crucial to accumulating currency in PoE. There are lots of vendor recipes that new players often miss out on. For example you can sell a full set of unidentified rare items(boots, helm, chest, amulet, rings, weapons) to receive a vendor and receive 2 chaos orbs. You shouldn’t try to hoard items for every vendor recipe – some will require too many trips back to town and take up too much stash space. Here’s a good video from the Lifting Nerd regarding what you should and shouldn’t pick up. Using a loot filter will help a lot in identifying what to keep.

Trading

Trading with other players is essential if you want to make the most currency possible. The above mentioned tools of poe.trade and acquisition makes trading easy. Avoid trade chat. It really is worth your time to set up acquisition and put up anything decent you find for sale. If it doesn’t sell you can always vendor it later to make space. If you don’t log much time it’s a better idea to price your items lower so that they sell quickly. Otherwise always stay at the market price. Over time you can lose out on a ton of currency if you’re consistently undercutting the market.

Here’s a great video from ZiggyD on how to trade in the beginning of a new league.

Leveling

Leveling is straight forward. For the most part you want to follow the quests. If you want to optimize your leveling process here’s a great guide put together by Lifting Nerd. Most build guides will have a leveling guide as well. Read these and follow their advice for skill gems/gear. The basic premise is to farm certain easy areas every few levels so that you out-level the quest content. That will allow for faster kills of mob packs and bosses and faster overall progression.

Comment
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General Game Mechanics

Rather than reinventing the wheel I’m going to link you over to ZiggyD’s PoE beginner series. It covers all the basics you’ll need to know in a concise and easy to understand fashion.

http://ziggyd.tv/featured/the-path-of-exile-beginners-guide-series/

Resources

The two best resources IMO are the Path of Exile subreddit and the PoE official forums. Both are very active and are full of helpful players.

www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum

That is all, thanks for checking out this guide! If you have any questions post them below.

December 10, 2015 By Jack Jones 1 Comment

How I Quit Caffeine for 10 weeks and What I Learned

I went off of caffeine cold turkey 10 weeks ago. No coffee, no teas, no chocolate, nothing at all that contained even 1mg of caffeine.

My reasons for quitting:

I felt terrible and tired all the time. I felt tired no matter how long I’d slept.
I couldn’t function without caffeine.
I started experiencing extreme anxiety – to the point that it became difficult to have conversations.
My emotional state deteriorated to the point of depression.
I was consuming 300-500mg caffeine/day.

With the way I was feeling I knew something needed to change. My productivity was awful(maybe 1-2 productive hours a day). My outlook was very negative. I was slipping into depression further everyday. Caffeine was the main culprit.

Benefits I’ve observed:

Sleep! Holy gods. No more racing thoughts in the evenings. No more waking up feeling exhausted.
Anxiety and social anxiety – gone. Back to my normal self.
Depression – gone.
Focus – It’s a tie between sleep and focus on what the most dramatic improvement has been. Previously I would find it hard to stay on-task for even 10 minutes. Now I can stay on-task for 60 minute blocks in the mornings(which get shorter as the day goes on).

I quit on a Thursday. The timeline that follows:

Week 1- Awful. Headaches. Sluggish. Brain fog. Difficult to have conversations. Needed a nap every 2-3 hours. Depression worsened. Anxiety still present.
Week 2– Headaches are gone. Still very sluggish. Conversations slightly easier. My brain doesn’t feel quite as stupid. Still need naps in the day to function.
Week 3- I don’t feel like a complete idiot in conversations. Still no motivation to do anything. Getting out of bed is really difficult. Depression is worsening. Anxiety is easing. Less need for naps and I have a few snatches of feeling “normal.” It feels like recovering from a long illness.
Week 4-6- Feeling close to “myself.” I can make it through the days without a nap. Still very unmotivated. I can wake up in the morning feeling decently rested but the motivation to get out and do anything is not there. This lack of motivation is leading into more depression as I am letting projects slide.
Week 7-10- Feel mostly normal. Mornings are still the most difficult. Past 4pm I feel energized, awake, and excited for life. Still depressed in the mornings.

Some Lessons

Consistent high dose caffeine masks other underlying contributors to our energy and motivation. Like sleep, nutrition, exercise, and our natural circadian rhythm.
Movement is vital. 20 minutes of aerobic exercise gives me a nice caffeine-esque boost in energy, sociability, and motivation for a few hours. Pure strength training has a smaller impact on my mood and energy.
Diet has massive impact on brain fog and motivation. I binged on pizza and ice-cream one weekend(my brain was craving dopamine possibly?) and for the next three days it was impossible to get out of bed or do anything productive.
I found MCTs from coconut oil in the morning and a low carb diet to be the most effective diet for alleviating brain fog and increasing motivation.
Natural rhythms play a huge role in how we feel!
Natural light and bright light is very important to getting rid of brain fog in the mornings.
Excess caffeine made me very distracted. Before I quit I had difficulty staying focused. New thoughts and ideas would always pop up and I would find myself clicking over to google something irrelevant.
Caffeine gives a real edge in social interactions. My baseline state is less energetic and less enthusiastic. I feel like caffeine gives a definite edge to social interactions. The most notable is thinking of witty things to say and keeping a conversation flowing. I also have almost zero desire for social interaction without caffeine.
The best way to maintain productivity and energy over the long-term is to take more rest and more breaks! It’s a pretty obvious statement but something that I haven’t followed very well up to this point in my life. The reason I kept increasing my caffeine was because I kept taking on more and more obligations.

Recommendations after 10 weeks

To anyone who takes caffeine regularly I would recommend a 60 day detox. Spend the first 30 weaning yourself down(cut your intake in half each week) and the next 30 cold-turkey. I’m not advocating that everyone drop caffeine forever. I think there’s very valuable lessons to be learned from getting off of caffeine. After you’ve spent 30 days caffeine free you can make a more educated decision on whether you want to get back on, what dose, and timing.

For me it reinforced a important lessons about exercise, nutrition, sleep, and overall mental health. I think it’s easy to see caffeine as a “fix-all” and rely on it to cover up other areas of our lives that require attention.

Caffeine should be given the same level of consideration that we give “harder” substances like amphetamines, modafinil, and other “drugs”. The ubiquitous nature of caffeine in our culture has given us the false impression that it’s a harmless drug. It is not. It is powerful and potent and can wreck havoc in our lives if it’s not respected and understood.