Category: Fitness

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I have been meaning for a while to write about how I seem to need more recovery from exercise now than I did five or six years ago. Back in 2020 I could do a hard workout one day, take one rest day, and then come back and do another hard workout. This year I seem to need more rest days to recover. A couple of times recently, I seemed to need six days to recover from a hard lifting session or a long run.

When I mentioned this to my family I got back a chorus of variations on “Getting old sucks.” And it is entirely possible that my recovery capability took a dramatic hit between age 60 and 66. But I didn’t want to just assume that it was aging. I wanted to see if I could figure out if that was actually true.

(I mean, I know that there are a bunch of other changes between than and now that might make a difference in how much recovery time I need. One is that I walk my dog a lot. Although I don’t count those walks as “workouts,” they are still physical activity that requires some amount of recovery. I didn’t have a dog in 2020. I walked plenty then too, but I didn’t go for a long walk every day. Probably only once a week did I walk as far as I do almost every day now. Another is that now I’m trying to train for sword fighting. Those training sessions aren’t usually extremely intense, but sometimes they are, and they’re also somewhat unpredictable, meaning I can’t always line those sessions up with days when I’m ready for a hard workout. Plus, they’re fun—which makes it much easier to end up overdoing it.)

Fortunately, I have my workout logs from 2020—starting right before the pandemic, when I rediscovered the fact that consistency beats intensity when it comes to exercise, and then from the couple of years after that, when the ongoing pandemic meant that I didn’t have to do anything else, and could just exercise as much as I wanted.

I have at least two ideas about things I might do to analyze this:

  1. Look at the logs. Is what I’m trying to do now (that seems to take so much recovery) more than what I was doing then?
  2. Replicate those workouts. An experiment I could do is just take a few weeks and do roughly the same workouts I did back in 2020. If that goes well, then maybe my recover capabilities haven’t gotten worse. Maybe I’m just doing harder workouts. Or anyway, workouts that are harder to recover from

So, I did take a first look at those logs, looking to see how much exercise I was doing for the first 30 or so weeks starting right before the pandemic, and how much recovery I was getting. I remember thinking at the time that I should aim for a workout every other day, accepting the reality that I’d occasionally miss a day, and end up hitting about three times a week, which seemed like a good goal. It turns out that, during this period of initial consistency, I was getting in almost three workouts per week as intended: 2.89 ± 0.83 workouts. The numbers showed a slight upward trend, with a few weeks with 4 workouts and almost none with just 2 in the last few weeks.

Me doing a kettlebell swing

So that’s a first thing to try: Exercising roughly every other day, rather than overdoing it for several days and then needing several days to recover.

Every-other-day isn’t the only good workout schedule. Since I like working out, I kind of like exercising almost every day. Separately from that test, maybe I can come up with a six-day-a-week schedule that doesn’t overdo it: Just one or two exercises per day, focusing on different muscles, different body parts, and different energy systems from one day to the next.

I have so many things to try! (Along with trying not to overdo it.)

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Most members of my HEMA club have painted their fencing masks in some way that’s meaningful to them.

I had long wanted to do so, but the thing I wanted to paint—the face of a sloth—was going to require at least three shades of brown, which I feared might be difficult to find. But when I finally went and looked on Amazon for acrylic paint markers, I found a set of acrylic markers in 12 different shades of brown!

I ordered them, they arrived yesterday, and I have painted my mask:

My brother confirms that I have met my goal:

https://wandering.shop/@stevendbrewer/116352448528001358/

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For the first couple of years I was doing longsword, I had real trouble keeping my arms extended and pushing my hands up (due to a lack of strength, lack of endurance, and lack of the habit).

I did all manner of training to work on this—exercises for arm strength, especially overhead pushing, endurance training for those same exercises, and of course sparring to train the habit. (See in particular Fitness training for longsword.)

I’m not there yet, but it no longer seems to be my worst problem. Here’s a sparring match with one of the better fencers in our local group:

I’m not quite all the way there, so it’s a thing to keep paying attention to, but it’s no longer my biggest problem.

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Just a smidgen longer than my previous long run, but this time I added some intervals along about the midpoint, where I ran hard for one minute, and then spent two minutes recovering, and repeated for a total of 5 times. Probably not the smartest choice (embedding that in a long run), but I enjoyed it anyway.

My fitbit says I did 4.75 miles in 1:13:26.

Just a spot where you can choose which part of the footpath to follow

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Overview of my results from Superpower.com

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know I’m big on metrics. It’s why I own both an Oura Ring and a Pixel watch. I am similarly interested in the annual blood work I get from my doctor’s office. That last though is often not quite as much or as often as I want, so I was very interested when Superpower reached out to offer me an extensive panel of blood work, if I’d post a review of their service.

This offer came at a particularly opportune time, as I’d been thinking of trying to get at least one specific test run ahead of my next physical. (I’d gotten a result that was slightly out-of-range on my creatinine test. This is common if you’re taking creatine, which I had been, but I still wanted to verify that it wasn’t indicative of a kidney problem. So, I’d gone off creatine, and wanted to re-run the test and be sure that my values had returned to normal.)

Getting a physical scheduled these days takes a ridiculous lead time, so it was going to be months before I got that blood work done. As I said, this made me want some other path to getting that test.

Enter Superpower, which is a way to get a vast suite of blood work done, but it’s much more than that. They have an AI trained on all these tests, with access to your results, that can integrate them together and answer questions about them. The answers are probably very similar to what your doctor could provide, except your doctor isn’t likely to have a couple of hours to go through your results line-by-line, the way I did last night with the Superpower AI.

You could get a reasonable read on any one of these markers just by googling the test name, but the Superpower AI has all your other results at its fingertips as well, so it can relate one value to another. For example, one of the blood tests measured my cortisol levels, and Superpower had this to say:

“Your cortisol level of 11.1 mcg/dL sits comfortably in the optimal physiologic range (10–18 mcg/dL), which suggests your adrenal function and stress response are well balanced.”

That’s roughly what you could get just by doing a google search on cortisol test and looking at the reference range. (Superpower is slightly better, because you won’t have to slog through the high values, the low values, the normal values, or the difference between the reference range and the optimal value.) But Superpower can do even better, because it has all your other data. For example, for me it goes on to say

  • This level indicates your hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis is functioning normally—not underactive (as in adrenal fatigue or insufficiency) and not overproducing cortisol (as with chronic stress, inflammation, or metabolic strain).
  • Given your low hs‑CRP (0.9 mg/L), balanced glucose (A1c 5.4%), and strong energy habits, your body is managing everyday physiological stressors efficiently.
  • You also show good DHEA‑S (88 mcg/dL), suggesting adrenal reserve is intact and age‑appropriate. The cortisol‑to‑DHEA‑S ratio is within the healthy range, a good sign of adaptive—not excessive—stress output.

I knew nothing about DHEA‑S, so reading what the Superpower AI said about it was instructive.

There were dozens of other tests (I think 160 in the basic panel), so the part of my brain that wants all the metrics was very happy indeed. If you’re like me, and just want the metrics, Superpower seems great: Lots of metrics and a very useful AI tool to tell you what they mean.

If you’re not like me, and you’re just interested in improving your health and performance, the value of Superpower isn’t quite as clear, but I think there is some value:

  • Every result that’s in the “optimal” range is one more thing to not worry about, and that’s useful.
  • Every value that’s in the “good” range (normal but not optimal) is a thing you could work on to improve your health or performance, and the AI will make some suggestions for how you could work to optimize all your blood work.
  • Every value that’s out of the reference range is, maybe, something you ought to talk to your doctor about.

That last is a bit uncertain. The doctors I’ve talked to over the years are pretty down on the idea of taking every test and then worrying about every value that’s out of the reference range. There are a few values (blood sugar, LDL cholesterol), where it’s both a clear sign that there’s something wrong that’s likely to lead to specific harms and there are practical treatments available that can reduce those harms. But just because a number is out of range isn’t much of a reason to do anything, unless there’s some symptom that’s plausibly related.

You almost certainly know what you ought to be doing to optimize your health. Eat food. Move a lot. Sleep well. (If not, read my post I’ve spent too much time thinking about longevity, which gives you a very slightly longer version of that same overview.)

Given that you know those things already, what would paying Superpower to run a bunch of blood tests do for your health and performance? That is: who is Superpower for?

First of all, it’s for people like me: People who just like having a bunch of metrics.

Second, it’s for people like me: People with a specific question to ask, like my question about creatinine levels.

Third, it’s for people who have trouble getting their doctor to go through all their test results with them. Of course any doctor who won’t go over any out-of-range results with you needs to be replaced. But ordinary blood work won’t even mention which of your results are in the reference range but outside the optimal range, and even a good doctor isn’t going to have time to go through those results and help you figure out how to improve them. The Superpower AI is a great tool for going through the normal-but-not-optimal results and coming up with a plan for optimizing your health.

Fourth, it’s for people who like the reassurance of being able to say, “Okay, I’ve got that one covered,” when one of the metrics is optimal, while being able to say, “Ah, but this other one could use a little more effort,” when one of the metrics is a little off. And, of course, there’s always the possibility that it’ll clue you in to something serious that you ought to take to your doctor.

So, how did I use it? Well, my creatinine levels had come back normal, so I’ve restarted creatine. My blood lipids are still a little off, even though I started a drug for that, so I have another thing to talk to my doctor about. Other than that, pretty much everything is normal, and most values are optimal, so I’m in that comfortable zone of feeling like I don’t have much to worry about.

How about the future? I just got the basic suite of blood work, and there are several options if I want to pay more money, and some of them are attractive.

For example, I’d be very interested to know about my magnesium levels. (Magnesium is very important in many cellular processes.) It’s not impossible to get enough magnesium from your diet—lots of foods have some magnesium in them—but there’s no one or two foods where you can just say, “Eat a couple of servings of this or that,” and you can be confident that you’ve got that base covered.

As another example, there are several B vitamins that need to be methylated to be turned into their active form, and people have a diversity of enzymes to do that, some of which are better than others. There are genetic tests to see if you have the gene for one of the good enzymes or one of the bad ones, but there are also tests to see if the vitamins in your blood are properly methylated, offered in the Methylation Specialty Panel. That’s another one that appeals to me.

I’ll consider those. If I decide to spring for them, I’ll follow up here in the future.

In the meantime, I’m pretty pleased with what I got: Something just for me.

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Suits of armor in a display case

I have long had mixed feelings about gameification, where you use the structures that underlie games (like points, achievements, badges, etc.) to motivate yourself to do the things you already know you want to do. I’m dubious about it, but at the same time, I do find myself motivated by such structures, which makes it very tempting to use them. (For exercise in particular, but really everything.)

Just lately, I’ve started thinking about a modest alternative: storyfication, where you use the structures of fiction to motivate yourself to do whatever it is you want to do.

Essentially, you tell yourself a story about what you’re doing, rather than making a game out of it.

Plenty of people do related things. There are several popular YouTube fitness channels that are all about using anime stories and situations, or superhero stories and situations, as inspiration for working out. (See for example JaxBlade, The Bioneer, or Kevin Zhang.) Some of them are primarily about aiming for the aesthetics of anime characters, but some reach into the story lines of specific anime. And some—the most interesting ones—use the underlying structure of anime or comic-book type stories as workout inspiration.

I’ll rough up an example here. Any story structure might be worth trying, but I’m inclined to start with the Hero’s Journey story structure. I’m assuming that we’re talking about doing exercises to get fit, but the basic storyfication thing could work for anything where you need to engage in repeated actions to get better at something—learning to paint, say, or learning to play the violin.

You begin with the Call to Adventure. If we’re talking about exercise, it would be a desire to get fit. Of course, the hero always initially resists the call. (Getting fit is a lot of work that’s hard and sometimes uncomfortable.) But finally the hero (you) chooses to accept the call.

The bulk of what you’d be doing would be “traveling on the road of trials, gathering powers and allies.” (That is, consistently doing your workouts.)

Dividing things up into separate books or seasons makes good sense. It can be very useful to grind away on one or a few things (building strength, say, or building endurance, or explosiveness) for a few weeks or a few months, but you need to include occasional breaks. You might consider each week of workouts a chapter or an episode. Put six or eight or ten together, then take a break. And then, of course, return for the next volume or the next season, perhaps with a new focus.

In the Hero’s Journey structure, the next thing would be to confront evil and be defeated, leading to a dark night of the soul. I don’t see much value in writing this into your plan, but there may be value in keeping the idea in your pocket for when things go awry. And, of course, things will go awry. A major project at work or at home may take so much time you can’t fit in all your workouts. An injury or illness may derail your workouts for a time. Maybe you’ll just hit a plateau in your fitness journey.

When something like that happens, well, you can view it as confronting evil. Remember, after being defeated, you face the dark night of the soul. One thing you might do at this point is think deeply about what obstacle might be blocking your progress. In fitness there are many possibilities: insufficient volume of exercise, insufficient intensity, insufficient recovery, poor exercise selection, poor nutrition . . . . The possibilities are nearly endless, and it is often hard to know which is the real culprit.

For that reason, the next step in the hero’s journey is especially appropriate: You take a leap of faith. Even though you can’t know what’s the best choice, you make a choice anyway. Maybe you ease up on intensity and focus on recovery. Maybe you double-down on exercise volume. Maybe you focus on your diet.

Whatever you choose, you can think of it as confronting evil again. And in a proper hero’s journey, this time are victorious.

Go ahead and write this part into your plan.

The final stage of the Hero’s Journey is that the student becomes the master. Again, there’s no need to write that into your plan. But it is entirely possible that having some success with storyfication will make you feel like sharing your insights with others, which is really what being a master of something is.

I generally view both gameifcation and storyfication as essentially neutral—neither good nor bad, except to the extent that the thing being motivated is good or bad.

Perhaps related to this is a word I’ve just learned:

“hyperstition.” The term, coined by “accelerationist” writer Nick Land, describes the belief that one can manifest future realities by telling compelling stories, and that prophecies become self-fulfilling through repetition and virality.

— https://www.thenerdreich.com/silicon-valley-apocalypse-capitalism/

Telling yourself a compelling story can definitely help you put in the time and effort to achieve your goals, just like the structures that underlie games can do the same.

Is anybody else out there interested in using story structure to motivate themselves to exercise (or do something else)? Anybody already doing so, and able to provide some first-hand experience?

Let me know! (See my Contact page for many ways to contact me.)

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I got in a nice run: 4.67 miles in 1h 5min 51s, for an average pace of 14:05. My Fitbit would have me believe that I spent 59 of those minutes with my heart rate in zone 5, which I’m sure is double-false. That is, I don’t think my HR reached the 200 bpm that the Fitbit recorded, nor do I think my maximum HR is nearly as low as 154, which is what the Fitbit estimates.

Still it was a great run. My fastest and longest in a long time, and I felt great the whole time.

Selfie with a footpath behind me, and run stats across the top and bottom of the image