Deep in the Second Half
SAVING EFFORT, MONEY, SANITY AND TIME
With the shift out of rehab and back into strength-specific drills and, joy of joys, the long-awaited return to Jujutsu, the version of my practice captured these past weeks is already obsolete. Old news.
And that’s the point. It is never complete. Any more than it is ever done.
But these two changes—one major, one minor—remind me that while I’ve been looking at the what and why these past weeks, I've overlooked the how.
And the common question, with the 20+ promised daily actions.
HOW DO I MAKE IT ALL FIT?
But while I understand the sentiment, it’s a question I find more than a little troubling, first because I sense the hopeful anticipation of the single tip or trick that will make all the time-saving difference.
When I’ve already pulled that particular rabbit from the hat.
For the conservation of effort, money, sanity and yes, time, the best thing you can do, by miles, is exactly what I’ve detailed: Dial up the resolution.
And while I do have more to offer in that regard below, it’s only a sideshow to that theme. Everything I’ve listed these past weeks, from saunas to cooking to walking to waking, is first considered and then refined in service of a broader physiological (or biological) principle.
Nothing is ornamental.
That’s how you ‘fit it all in.’ Not by stacking more, but by ensuring everything you do counts. This, by contrast to vague generalisations like:
Getting some exercise
Eating ‘right’
Catching up on sleep
That, even if we charitably assume some net benefit, when compared to the more directed and specific are, individually and collectively, quite literally a waste of time. Or breath.
But it’s also a question that, just in the asking, mistakenly paints a bursting-at-the-seams picture and the idea that shoe-horning activities into every waking second is either desirable or necessary.
And I don’t do that either. But I do make the most of dead space.
When I get home from work each morning, I walk in the door and switch the jug on:
Boil the jug + heat the milk
Horse Stance
Drink a glass of water
Feed the dog
Horse Stance
Make the coffee
Horse Stance
Hang
I haven’t added a second to ‘Make coffee and feed dog’, I’ve just made the most of dead time.
That’s at one end of the day, and this is at the other:
Calf Raises while I brush and floss my teeth
Calf Raises I forgot to include in the relevant post because these, like all the other extremely beneficial and, done daily, highly effective drills, are, to all intents and purposes, invisible.
Money for nothing.
I could add these exercises to a training session, but then I’d need to find an extra 10 minutes. On a tight day, that might be the reason the session—or the drill—gets skipped altogether.
Training, similarly, is rarely stand-alone, and between sets I’m preparing lunch or doing housework— something.
The Horse Stance is new (again), but there is always something in this space, making the straight switch from rehab drills seamless. Jujutsu, on the other hand, is now reclaiming <10 hours each week.
But I bookmarked that space. Which is to say, I didn’t fill it with anything that was going to make it difficult to reincorporate.
Raising another critical practice distinction.
A practice is not merely resilient to the ebbs and flows of life but anti-fragile in that not only does it not demand that everything be just so, but it is first proven and then strengthened by disruption.
Nonetheless, out of respect for the obvious importance of what is included —or else it wouldn’t be there—and the practice itself, I don’t set myself up for an easily foreseeable fall.
The tired cliché of the holiday exercise program or diet that dies on impact with real life is to do neither and, at best, makes an already difficult period of back-to-work transition more so, and more likely only guarantees failure.
Furthermore, where possible, I’m using cues that —like walking in the door— don’t rely on memory, mood or motivation. Combined with habit-stacking and one action leading to the next, a single decision —insofar as you can call it that— puts me on a conveyor belt to a constellation of others either combined or sequenced to best effect.
But nor is it really a decision. At least it isn’t then.
I have already decided—that’s why it’s in the practice. And while the inclusion of anything can be reviewed, it’s never in the moment.
So it gets done.
I’m not saying you need to do anything as detailed here. Again, none of this is prescriptive, but I find that taking these tiny moments is the best way to get all the boring stuff done.
But if you want to stand still and stare into space while you brush your teeth, go for it. And perhaps making coffee in the morning is already asking more than you’re prepared to give at that hour of the day, without playing silly buggers.
But if you’re scoffing at the idea of having 10 hours ‘spare’ to drop back into your week, you might want to hold fire.
WHERE DOES THE TIME GO?
You can do a minimum effective dose, tick-all-the-boxes training program in less than 2% of your week.
1.79%, in fact. So, even if you do training only during that time— and without the emails or housework, it’s not asking much.
Which is to say, your body doesn’t ask much.
And it’s flexible and you can structure that time as your lifestyle allows, from the 2 x 75-90 minutes ‘weekend warrior’ protocol to the 6 x 25-30 that I do currently, and everything in between.
So you’ve got options.
You’ve also got time. More than enough.
Once, I would have people conduct a time audit and list all the major players from work, sleep, commute, etc., and then add up the total, and we’d see where we’re at.
And we may still get to that. But I doubt it.
Because I would put the family farm on your screen time exceeding the 3-hour 1.79% we’re looking for in well less than half a week. And some of you will be 2-3 times that in a single day. And that’s just your phone.
I promote the idea of an all-things-fitness practice on the proviso that it is doable. For everyone. And in over 14 years of coaching, I'm yet to meet somebody who could not do it.
So confident am I, that if you send me a screenshot showing you haven’t exceeded 3 hours of screentime total in even 2 days, I’ll coach you for 6 months for free and prove it.
And, hey, you can do what you like, but let’s not continue to trot out the too-easy fiction of having no time.
So that’s how I do it. And it affords me the time to have a life that isn’t filled to the brim with ‘fitness’ or anything else.
And I’m not going to get into a my-day-is-busier-than-yours-competition, but I will say that the hurriedness and harriedness, the inbox overflowing, and not enough hours in the day are just part and parcel of the world we’ve made, not a curse uniquely yours. Ask anyone.
A fitness practice is not only a flexible, wholly pragmatic approach that accommodates this unfortunate reality, but is also a refuge from it.
On the surface, nothing is serving you. You're rattling around in a world of empty platitudes like ‘do what you love’ and other average advice for the average person.
But the average of everyone is not the average of anyone.
So this public health messaging is about as useful as telling a drowning person to just swim. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with exercise, but nor is there necessarily anything right about it. So we dial down for a reason. As we dig deeper, we’re not discarding but integrating the previous, more superficial level. That is: all training is exercise, but very little exercise is training.
You might appreciate that critical distinction by reading, but you’ll feel it by doing. And that feeling will further inform your decision-making and recalibrate your perception, leading to the next layer of detail. As true here as it is of all learning.
You don’t grow out of the basics. You grow into them—over and over, with greater depth. As each stage opens up to you, as well as (perhaps) resolving what you intended, it further opens other possibilities you never even imagined. The things you didn’t know you didn’t know. Things you can then choose, or not, in building your ‘complete’ practice.
As Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences”, but it’s not surprising so few enjoy any degree of fitness when splashing around in the shallow end of the pool is such an inefficient, unskilled, uninterested and uninteresting way to go about it.
We’re just past the halfway mark for 2025, and although you’ve missed the flagship Youniversity, you can still go deep in the second half. There are 2 places open for Leftfield Online. And if you’re local, the Winter training block kicks off Monday at Burnley Park.
Try the other end.
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Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI