And so we get to the final station on our voyage through my fitness practice.
Of all the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written in over a decade, a quick tally reveals easily 95% of them have been wholly, or mostly, about mindset.
Not because our efforts in other domains are any less important, but because the only way they can have any effect is through our doing them, and absent the requisite mindset, what we might intend typically remains theory, not practice.
And secondly, because the problem is, often enough, purely in how we think about it, and whatever the methodology, dietary or recovery protocol, the wrong mindset will corrupt them equally. And absolutely.
It’s no exaggeration to say that nearly every “diet problem” is a thinking problem, not a food one.
Acting on misinformation isn’t the half of it. Flawed thinking patterns—biases, distortions, emotional landmines—sabotage consistency, decision-making, and self-trust. Without debugging our software, fitness success is more fluke than good management.
MINDSET
Meditation
Beset by the same confusions of meaning and distortions of language that, as with fitness, go a long way towards making the simple impossible, meditation is a post in itself— and there’s one in the works.
However, valuable though it is, it may surprise you to learn that where I once recommended it, I no longer consider meditation either mandatory or magical when it comes to a fitness practice.
That’s not to discourage you from taking it up. But it shouldn't be viewed as a prerequisite, and in some cases, there may be more appropriate or accessible entry points for cultivating awareness.
The benefits for more specific fitness-related goals—greater self-awareness, emotional regulation, and detachment—can often be accessed more directly through things like self-talk, journaling, or working with a coach. These tools can offer the same kind of reflective distance much sooner and more reliably than you might expect from meditation alone.
There’s no doubt meditation and a fitness practice are complementary, with each sharpening the other, but that perfect dovetail—like its hand-cut, woodworked namesake—takes time, precision, and practice to align.
Fitness and meditation, like any practice, blossom through consistent, grounded attention to process, but it’s only normal to have one eye, at least some of the time, on the prize.
And that is poison to meditation. Not because it dies under the pressure of expectation, but expectation, by definition, is never now—the only place meditation can be.
You can understand this intellectually and still wrestle with it. For years. So if you’re just learning to meditate, don’t burden it with any heavy lifting. Let it be what it is—its own kind of practice. No pressure. No outcomes. Just presence.
In fitness, while expectation isn’t nearly as inhibitory, it’s also true that over time, this too shifts from a ‘pursuit’ to where meditation and a fitness practice ultimately converge: the quiet attention to what is.
But just in writing this now, I realise a brief shift from resolution back to perspective is in order.
Because it occurs to me that it’s not meditation— or journaling, or self-talk— that has had the greatest influence on my mindset, but the close study of others.
Coaching.
I haven’t considered it part of my (fitness or meditation) practice until now, but it’s striking that these are the very same benefits. While impossible to quantify, it’s likely that’s where much of the work has happened.
I've been at pains to point out— as friends and family will attest— this doesn’t, by any stretch, make me immune to the habits and hangups of my own proclivities, but the heightened awareness, emotional distance, and clarity afforded by looking at (not out) offers another avenue to learning these skills it would be dishonest to ignore.
Although vital in the makeup of any practice, more than being attributable to any daily or weekly behaviours, mindset is more an attitude you choose to adopt, sometimes with help, that serves your best interests— which is also to say, it serves the practice itself.
But while it can be adopted by, and at the speed of, choice, it’s also an emergent property, one first proven and then strengthened through action. A cultivated attitude or disposition that makes the presence (or absence) of willpower less a deciding factor than a luxury in any decision to forgo the easy in favour of the hard.
And this will happen daily. And weekly. And monthly. And so on.
So, paradoxically, while it can’t be attributed to any single behaviour, it is, ultimately, attributable to all of them. And while there is a lot of truth to the idea that you can fake it until you make it, your actions must be, undeniably, set on the making-it side of that equation.
So if you take nothing else from this, understand that—as everything is training, all the time— your mindset is shaped by every decision you make.
DOPAMINE MANAGEMENT
The perfect day is rare, but to say I do 90% of these things, 90% of the time, would be a very conservative estimate.
But I’m not wed to any of it. It will change, as it should, to address the needs and constraints of my life. But, equally, if I don’t feel like fasting on a given day, I’ll listen to my body and eat.
If that becomes a more-often-than-not thing, I’ll review its place in the practice, but what I won’t do over the long term is knuckle down and do it anyway.
Certainly, there are times when I gut through the hard stuff. If it’s any easier for me to get out of a warm bed and go outside to train on a cold, dark morning when I can hear rain on the window, it’s only because I’ve done it repeatedly.
But another protestation that forever falls on deaf ears and is, at bottom, the fundamental misunderstanding conceded by those fortunate enough to move past it in realising a practice of their own.
I don’t white-knuckle my way through any of it because my subjective experience is better for doing it than not.
Is sitting in mediation sometimes a chore? Of course.
On a cold morning, do I always want to step under a cold shower? No.
But I make it easier through good dopamine management. I don’t just enjoy the benefits I get from these things; I accept they come courtesy of the discomfort.
Cooking food vs scoffing a Big Mac
Hill sprints vs Netflix
Burning muscles and lungs vs ‘doing what I love’
Meditation vs social media
Ice bath vs … damn near anything
A fact further misinterpreted as zero discomfort = zero benefit.
You wish.
Zero discomfort = HUGE downside. AND massive involuntary discomfort, hot on its heels.
So I never ‘reward’ myself for doing the hard thing. And, best of all, I simply choose to see the ‘hard thing’ itself as the reward. As can you— just decide.
It would be a lie to say it sands off all the rough edges, but, for me, it feels less like I’m making myself do it, than the fact that I miss doing it. And I do miss it. I never have to force any of these discomforts into (or back into) my practice because I feel better for it.
I am listening to and giving my body what it needs.
TO RECAP
[With < signifying a shift to higher resolution behaviour]
EXERCISE < TRAINING
Resistance: Dan John KB program and (knee-specific) ATG
Power: Slowly reintroducing (now x2) hill sprints (1/week)
Conditoning: Seadily increasing running mileage (2-3x/week) and adding Norwegians (1/week)
Mobility: Rehab (knee) specific drills + Hanging
NUTRITION
Eating Like A Human < Whole Foods + Supplements < TRE
Coffee
REST
Sleep < Circadian Cues (sleep routine + morning light exposure)< Sleep hygiene (cool, dark room, no phone + no eating within 3 hours of bed)
Reading (not work)
Dog walking
Phone fasting
MINDSET
Meditation
MISC
No social media: See dopamine management above.
Circadian cues: Eat, Sleep + Train at same times
2+ hours outside
Tooth brush + Floss
Walking
With the addition of the usual but, due to injury, not presently:
PLAY
Jujutsu
But although we’ve been looking at each of these categories for descriptive purposes, nothing, where body and mind are concerned, exists in isolation.
As mindset crosses every border, training influences sleep, and food shapes everything, you can pull any thread, and it all unravels.
These finer adjustments do lead to more useful behaviour—at least in the context of what I want— but they don’t represent a hierarchy. If you have an iron deficiency, a supplement becomes a first-order consideration.
But a final important caveat of mindset is to consider not just what I include but what I don’t.
WHERE I DRAW THE LINE
So that is my complete practice and what I do currently. Each of these tactics is in the service of a broader principle and directed towards health, fitness and performance, in that order.
But whether you see it as the essentials or excessive, more is not better because there is no end to what I could include—gadgets, protocols, rabbit holes.
But even if I had the budget, I’m certain this marks the intersection of things that are good for me, that improve my quality of life, and that I’m willing to do.
Because you can absolutely overdo it. We well know the pursuit of beauty can ultimately have an inverse relationship with mental health, and so it is, not at all paradoxically, with wellness.
Biohackers, even when addressing some biological demand, by legitimate means —the pseudoscience aside— are often shorn of all the good things we might associate with health, revealing a desperate fear of oblivion or the outsized hubris (and delusion) of a constitution so robust, so radiant that death himself will pass.
And if that’s what they want to do, good for them.
This is where I draw the line.
But you can draw your own.
RESOLUTION
At low resolutions, you see symptoms: I’m tired. I’m unmotivated. I feel off.
At deeper levels, you start seeing root causes, patterns, and relationships. My sleep is wrecked because I’m disrupting my circadian rhythm every night with artificial light, irregular meals, and unresolved stress.
Your attention is a finite resource. In low-res mode, it’s scattershot—distracted, overstimulated. In high-res mode, it’s selective, intentional, and precise. You stop chasing everything and start cultivating what matters.
Low-res life is reactive. Stuff happens to you. High-res living brings ownership. You can’t control everything, but you can respond—with increasing skill and agency.
These refinements don’t add complexity. They don’t take more time.
They just make that time count. To land on the behaviours that have the best effect.
To cut through the noise. To sharpen the signal.
That’s the aim of this practice. And that’s the aim of Leftfield Youniversity: To guide you to your fitness practice. Not just something you follow but something you’ve built, tested, and made your own.
LEFTFIELD YOUNIVERSITY starts this Friday, July 4.
Independence Day.
____
Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI