Hi everyone – I miss you all!! It has been two weeks since I have been at Union and I wanted to share an update from Cody and myself.  Lots of things in our lives were going very well and our wedding date (September 4^th) was quickly approaching.  We were simply bound for a bump in the road.  The reasoning we may never know, but we are nothing short of thankful to be home together again.  

Two weeks ago I was driving home from work and had a stomach pain that felt like hunger pain.  I had a snack and prepped dinner for when Cody would come home a few hours later.  I didn’t make it long before I was feeling nauseous and curled up under all our blankets.  By the time Cody got home I was on the bathroom floor and got sick about every hour that night.  Morning came around and I wanted a shower, chicken broth, and a movie day to rest up before normalcy the following day.  By that evening though, my stomach had an awful pain.  We went to the ER where they did minimal tests but said a stomach virus is going around, gave me drugs, and sent me home.  

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday the pain worsened, and nothing made it feel any better.  I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t lay down, and I couldn’t stand up straight.  I slept upright with a fan a foot away from me, a cold rag on my forehead, and a heating pad on my stomach. The sharp pain would come in waves and I would wake up in excruciating pain squeezing Cody’s hand as hard as I could.  My mind kept going back and forth between thinking they missed something and thinking I was the biggest baby with a stomach virus.  

Saturday night the pain was the worst it had been and Sunday we decided to go to Urgent Care.  They recommended Pepcid and to call my PCP the following day.  Later that day I was so crippled, and Cody thankfully decided we needed to go back to the ER.  I would have never admitted it, but I knew that was what we needed to do.  

This time around we had two amazing doctors that palpated and did the tests we needed.  They came back with urgency in their eyes and said we need to perform an emergency appendectomy.  My appendix had been ruptured probably since the time we came in on Wednesday and my entire abdomen was full of the toxins.  This would be my first surgery and I was so nervous.  It was also 6 days prior to our wedding.  Cody held my hand and calmed me down by doing simple breath work.

Surgery was performed that evening and the doctor came out to tell Cody that my case was the worst he had ever seen and a lot would need to be done throughout the week.  I came out with a catheter, a nasogastric tube, and a stomach tube continuing to drain out the toxins.  I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything from Sunday to Friday but I could suck on ice chips and hard candies.  Walking was encouraged and I insisted on making my slow laps every two hours holding onto my multitude of tubes.  

It felt like no progress was being made for the first four days.  In fact, Wednesday was a bit of a negative spiral and the day we officially postponed the wedding.  However, things were looking brighter on Friday.  They removed the NG tube and allowed me clear liquids which never excited me more!  I graduated to soft foods on Saturday and a normal diet on Sunday.  

Sunday evening the doctor removed the stomach tube and said I would be discharged Monday morning.  It felt like this day would never come!  Cody picked me up at 10am on the beautiful Labor Day morning for my first time in fresh air.  We drove home and I took my first shower in 10 days.  By 1pm, Cody and I were married!!! Our families put together a small ceremony for us at the pond and then we celebrated with soup and bread.  It was everything we could have imagined.  I was alive and home and with the people that mean the very most to me.  

Cody sat with me every single day in the hospital.  He helped me walk around, he played cards with me, and he sat there while I napped.  He laughed with me when I needed adult diapers.  He bathed me with a washcloth and shaved my legs while I laid in bed.  He calmed me when the pain was really bad or the news really scary.  I have 22 staples down my abdomen now which I couldn’t look at for days, but he made me feel more loved and beautiful than ever before.  I am sorry this life event has taken Cody away from the gym as well, but he has been everything I needed.  We love each other more than we could have imagined.  I hope no one has to go through what we did, but I hope everyone finds a love that is even stronger on the harder days.  

The recovery is going to be long, but we look forward to returning to Union this Monday.  In the meantime, we are resting and just so happy and appreciative to be home together.  We will see you soon! 

Hey all our friends of UF. I am typing this while sipping my coffee and enjoying the lack of humidity that  Colorado Springs offers. I am doing minimal work during my trip out west. One thing I did want to do is type this blog. We have been dealing a lot with mental health and life help recently, as the last year and a half has reminded me to take care of your mental and physical health.

Tips for traveling and training.

1. Take some time off! Enjoy your trip. Don”t fret over one or two missed training sessions.
2. Plan your training so your trip is time for a deload or recovery time.
3. If you must train set rules around your training. I set a clock when I enter the gym and whatever I can finish in 45 minutes gets done. The rest I don’t worry about.
4. Use nature! Do something different and allow your body to move differently. You could hike, climb, bike, or even do an extreme sport such as zip lining.
5. Enjoy your meals. You are on a vacation, be sure to enjoy it and don’t sweat each and every meal.
6. GET SOME REST! The idea of a vacation is rest and recovery, as well as learning new things about the world. So when you return you should be re-inspired to train harder, push harder, and enjoy your training more.

As for me I have a few plans while here. One I am renting a bike that I would never purchase (it cost more than my car). I plan on riding two of the most famous trails in Colorado Springs and doing some fun hiking (2,000 vertical foot down hill trails).

Thanks for reading this and I hope this helps you a little on your next trip. Until then, call Curtis when things in the gym break cause I won’t have cell service :-).

Stay Human.

Hamer

What is discipline? Should you practice discipline all the time? Are there times that you should be undisciplined? 

This blog won’t aim to answer these questions for you, but it will attempt to help you understand the factors that go into answering these questions. Discipline is obviously an integral part of successful training, so being disciplined all the time is good, right? Maybe. 

Fast Thinking vs. Slow Thinking (Intuition vs. Logic)

Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking, Fast and Slow that we have two rough categories of thinking. One mode of thinking is quick, intuitive, and acts on the aggregation of both conscious and unconscious information. This type of thinking is very efficient in social situations and in which time is extremely constrained. This is the more primitive form of thinking, and it’s been refined over the existence of humankind. 

The second mode of thinking is slow, deliberate, and has the ability to make the most accurate decision from the specific information given. What’s more, this type of thinking is able to take into account the past events of history and possible projections of the future. More about this in a moment. Although this thinking is slower, the decisions made are usually more robust because they have survived scrutiny from a multitude of angles. 

The reason I bring this up is that logical thinking is great at projecting the future. This means that we are able to play out possibilities in our head. This also gives us the unique ability to understand the impact of our decisions and delay gratification. You’ve probably heard all about this. Run on the treadmill now and suffer, have better body composition and wellness in the future. This lies at the heart of the idea of discipline. In layman’s terms, discipline is the ability to make decisions now that sacrifice the short-term and optimize the long-term. But should we do this all the time?

Discipline and Autonomy Clash

There are times in which the discipline that we’ve committed ourselves to restricts our autonomy. Autonomy is a fundamental human need in different amounts across individuals. However, we all need it to a degree. Don’t feel like benching? Too bad. Suck it up. Don’t feel like doing conditioning? Tough cookies. Get it done. 

While this approach will help us stick to our commitments, we are ignoring important information. Intuitive information. Enter fast thinking. If you really don’t feel like lifting, there may be a good reason for it. Grinding through sessions is a good skill to possess, but my contention is that this skill shouldn’t always be expressed. The reason is that always choosing the routine you’ve committed yourself to betrays some deep desires. 

So, what’s the answer? Do your best to balance discipline and autonomy. There are most certainly times in your life in which you won’t make very disciplined decisions. If you’re on vacation, I would contend that discipline should be the last thing on your mind. Relax and follow your interests. Get away from the structure for a while. But at the same time, don’t use your intuition and impulses to justify making decisions that don’t align with your goals. 

There is a season for everything. Discipline can help us transform ourselves into the people we want to be in the future. This is an important endeavor, but not at the expense of completely sacrificing good food with the people we love, being silly and impulsive, or spending time not doing a whole lot at all.

One of my all time favorite podcasts is, Hidden Brain Podcast(HB). HB’s host is Shankar Vedentam. Shankar has a degree in electrical engineering and a masters in journalism from Stanford. He has also written books, plays, as well as numerous articles. You may ask, but what does this have to do with health and fitness? Great question.

Big Data.

One area Shankar has done a ton of research into (and has discussed on this podcast) is big data. What he found is if one can grab a ton of aggregate data and break it down we can find many issues in society. Everything from what we google to how we spend our time. What I see here is input vs. output. Shankar looks at what we input daily. This could be in our minds or our bodies. This will lead you to become future you.

Input, Current You to Future You.

Last week on HB Shankar discussed the battle between current you and future you. A great example is a bowl of ice cream. Current you wants it, future you won’t get it but will deal with your decision. Future you won’t taste the ice cream but will store the extra calories and have a little less money because of the decision you made in that moment. Now that’s consider this on a more positive note. We all want to be stronger and fitter. So current you must create a stressor great enough that an adaptation will occur that will only be noticed to future you.

What input are you going to use with your body today? What training, diet, and educational input will lead to a better future you? The beauty in all of this is we do not know with 100% accuracy how this will all work out. Current you could do everything correct and future you may suffer due to issues outside of your control. This is why we can only concentrate on the input not the output. We everyday are gambling with our training, education, and life. So take the safe bet for future you, train hard, eat better, and read more. And when the day is over show gratitude to those who supported future you and your process.