Welcome to second episode of ‘The DadFit Podcast’ 🎉!
On this episode I have a nice chat with my buddy …
Conor Flynn:
His bio:
Former stressed out dad who learned to balance work with family and helping you do the same • Writing my 1st novel • Meditating for 20+ years.
Give him a follow him on Twitter
We chat about:
* Setting Healthy Examples
* Cultural Differences
* Nutrition Challenges
* Benefits of Meditation
* Personal Goals
Interested in being a guest? Get in touch!
To your success,
Barret J. Nobel Founder, DadFit Weekly
Let me help you achieve DadFit status 💪 Schedule a FREE 15 minute consult 👇
Auto-Transcript:
What's up everybody Welcome to the DadFit podcast I'm Barret Nobel here with Connor Flynn right I'm assuming that one right 🤣
yeah hey good to see you um I'm gonna admit this is my first time in a podcast so yeah well it's only my second time so I'm only I'm only slightly ahead of you on that one cool it's exciting though I mean uh I've been wanting to do it for a while I did like um I don't know if you've seen my uh hybrid deadly um podcast I did prior to this so what I would do is uh I would convert my blog posts um and I would use AI to read them and they were performed they were so bad um I mean I couldn't I couldn't stand her anymore I I don't know I I did like seven or eight episodes of that maybe um and yeah I was looking yeah when I was checking out your podcast I saw a lot of them and I was trying to figure out yeah yeah yeah but yeah I'm a big fan of the movement of just you know getting dads healthier and I don't know if I'm the model of that but I think I think of a few a couple of things I'm doing okay in so uh yeah that's great I mean I don't think any of us are really the model we just uh certainly do the best we can for our kids I mean like my kids aren't interested at all in it so okay I kind of just trying to set the set the standard I suppose and maybe uh they'll pick it up eventually at least at least they're aware of it I guess that's the biggest thing that my wife and I try to bring to the table is we'll bring little baby down here while we're working out and we just all went on a family bike ride together last weekend to get all this one out and uh it was awesome because she she's definitely not a big Fitness person but but when they get older those memories get stuck in your head like because um a lot of it's my dad you know I think of him and he's still getting out there and he you know I'm the I'm probably the least active person in my family so maybe I'm like your kids but in my head I'm like oh God my dad is out there you know snow sewing right now and he's running five candies almost 80. and I'm like you know I gotta get off the couch and like go do something yeah yeah so it makes a difference uh yeah all right well can you tell us a little bit about your background um your I obviously you mentioned a little bit of your Athletics but just any anything specific you want to talk about I mean to be honest the big part with me as far as Athletics I was never into sports that much but I am growing up as an outdoorsy type of kid and um I I didn't grow up in the city I was in Massachusetts in western Mass and you know yeah yeah it's good my dad took me hiking all the time and I just equated you know exercise of being outside so we we'd be when those people would ruin a hike because these people that were racing up the mountain you know what I mean and not not enjoying it but uh but yeah mountain biking was my thing when I was a teenager and um yeah yeah I had a friend I did you know a tiny bit of MMA but my my personality wasn't suited for it I sort of gave up after a while I was like I'm gonna do Aikido but yeah yeah but for me yeah yeah sorry I'm gonna say my dad would be happy tonight he did Aikido he's been wanting to find a I don't even know what it would be called the Dojo or a gym for Aikido but he's wanted to find one his whole life and there's just wherever we lived was just such a low population it was not a no one was doing it we're defined it I actually never got around to doing it either I just I've been yeah yeah I wanted to but uh I I did the MMA and it was so intense and I was like wow this really is like great exercise but I it's not my personality it was like um what is it like um in a conflict whoever strikes first has the highest percentage of winning the conflict but I just didn't like that but you know what I mean like I said I'd rather be like reactive because I don't want to like you know yeah yeah anyway but it makes sense with your uh a love for Aikido then because that isn't that one about like using the person empty and they you use their own aggression to stop them and you know yeah yeah that's fine but then I never actually got into taking the classes either but yeah yeah the big thing for me is when I moved to the city because I left the states and I moved to Thailand and then you know I couldn't be outside anymore so I had to switch to going to a gym which I never really did you know lifting weights and running was always so removed but I still wanted to be healthy so I sort of switched to that that was the hardest switch for me yeah the trines yeah it definitely is how do you how do you think you find the balance and all of that I mean obviously with being a dad in the family life and then you're you're a teacher correct over in Thailand yeah yeah primary school and uh I I get a little exercise I get my steps in just from Matt you know but um but it's um for me the Kettlebell has been my savior over the year since I became a dad nice so yeah yeah it's um does it does it put on too much muscle but at least you know you can get your heart up and you get that functional movement and um I I was surprised because I I didn't start learning about anything really about Athletics or how to train your body until it became a dad because I had to train smarter you know I couldn't yeah it's hard before it could go to the gym three days a week and do the classic like okay lift weights and then run on the treadmill for 30 minutes you know like everybody does it doesn't quite know you know yeah you know at least some bar you know the what do you call the the barbell curl you know only in the yeah but um but then I didn't have time to do that so I was like oh okay it's like I found the Kettlebell and you can just do the simple and Sinister Pavel you know thing you look up or Pavel stuff because he's the only name I know specifically in kettlebells and I I'm gonna attribute that to Tim Ferriss but I feel like most of the stuff Fitness related is influenced by Tim Ferriss somehow that's how I came across it too you know the four hour body yep that was it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah kettlebells are fantastic this I mean just the diversity of exercises and just the small compactness that is the Kettlebell itself they're phenomenal I've got I've got a couple here in our little home gym I don't use them as thoroughly as I used to but I definitely incorporate kettlebell swings almost regularly in most of the routines that I do just they're just fantastic little exercises full body you get your heart rate up and they're they're humbling honestly well yeah it's the thing my wife is making fun of me she's like that that's it you did even do it for 10 minutes it's like you you try and do that for more than 10 minutes and see how you you feel you know they have a similar experience when uh I used to do boxing so just jump roping I mean the first time I got I was like they're like all right do this for like 10 rounds three minutes each and like what that's good that's nothing I like the fifth round I'm like oh my God I'm just like slightly jumping here and I'm gassed like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a simple but effective like stuff you know yeah yeah exactly so Thailand man what how did you end up you went from Massachusetts directly to Thailand um oh man I don't know if I could tell the long story the short story it's just like um yeah I just I sort of graduated you know like one of those guys I think I got I got a Philosophy degree and um
yeah and of course like what do I do now and how's one of those naive people right and I realized about halfway through that I I did not want to be going to Academia I just wasn't into it like the lifestyle I would talk to other people who were doing it and the professors and it I love I love learning and I know I talk to you on Twitter too you do too it's like always learning and but I just didn't like something about it didn't appeal to me and I I was like okay what do I do now and she's like oh I can I can always you know travel in Asia for a while and I was really into Buddhism around the meditation when I was um maybe 19 or 20. I sort of got into it yeah yeah so I was just like oh go to you know East Asia and and um you know so it was around my mid-20s I just sort of jumped on a plane sold my my car and just like all right see what happens and uh yeah yeah so it and eventually I I got certified I got my Masters in Education and now I work in an international school here and uh it's worked out well because um I I can get my daughter to go there and now yeah I don't even know what I would do if I came back to America now so I'm pretty pretty settled yeah yeah how long have you been there um 15 years about 15 years now yes it's changed quite a bit in 15 years I don't know I don't know oh I can't I came back um for the first time in 14 years last year believe it or not um and I I just to see my dad and my sister they have come over here before but I haven't gone back since my daughter was born and um I actually I liked it it was nice to be back again just the open space and the the cold I miss being cold and yeah it's nice to have a change in culture too I know in America everybody's complaining oh America's going crazy everybody's so good but to be honest the bluntness of people was a nice sayings from the the Saving Face of East Asian culture that is almost relaxing like oh look somebody's just looking right at me in there they're telling me exactly what they're feeling and thinking all the time you know it's uh it's refreshing in a way oh yeah absolutely I used to work for a Japanese company and that that's saving facing frustrated me so much during meetings because um yeah they won't give you a direct answer like this sucks like I would I would say that constantly in meetings if I I mean I would be a little more political about it but I would be directing like we can't release this because XYZ and I if when I first started there I had a few people after meetings come out I was like you can't you can't say that directly in immediately I'm going to but why I think that doesn't make any sense to me and it's just those cultural differences are massive yeah yeah yeah it's um it's hard to move things forward you know I think it's uh it can be tricky sometimes yeah I I can't complain though I mean it's also it's there's an easiness too it sounds crazy but um after 10 years being here when I came back to America it was very um I don't know how to explain it it takes a lot of energy whereas like you don't have to expend as much in your social interactions in Thailand if that makes any sense whereas in America I like this refreshing I felt very on because people when they look at you they're very genuine and there's a genuine sort of I don't know how to explain it but uh but yeah yeah it's very different very different yeah the Dynamics are definitely I mean just commonly it's it's phenomenally different sometimes yeah yeah but at the same time also it's um it's a great place to raise a family because in some ways there's like a very uniform culture so it's very at least safe you know what I mean it's like I have never been mugged in Thailand I've never felt like when I'm walking with my family at night that I have to like look around a lot to make sure it's safe in a giant Metropolitan City if I was walking through like parts of Boston at night you know I've had friends like getting pistol whipped in broad daylight in some areas you know carrying groceries you know um yeah yeah but I mean Thailand is just very has that very like civilized aspect to it you know that that's um yeah good good they've had a much longer history to kind of figure all that out and weed it out I think yeah yeah that's true America's still the just sort of like condensing and figuring out what it wants to do next it's uh how yeah 200 200 years or so yeah we're still the grumpy teenager on the global scale of age exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly that's man you were saying that you didn't necessarily Focus or pay attention to your Fitness until you became a father um what exactly other than like maybe time management um change for you I mean you can speak on time management because that's that's obviously one of the biggest keys to fitting in your Fitness and Nutrition while being apparent yeah yeah um well I think that the big one was um two things is time management and also burn out from other aspects of becoming a dad because you know yeah I mean I I it's like for example just like you know trying to make ends meet provide the best you can for your family and it's like you know before I was a dad I never thought about that stuff I mean look at me Mr Philosophy degree hey you know
yeah exactly like so then it's like oh crap I gotta get it you know so um yeah yeah I think the biggest wake-up call for me as far as health was actually a few years ago it was um I was just burnt out and I was you know burning the candle at both ends I was working full time I had like two part-time jobs and I was doing freelance web design on the side with different clients and uh I remember one night in the middle of the night I just went up to go the bathroom and I was coming back and I was kind of passed out and I okay I got it and then I opened the bathroom door and my daughter is walking towards you and it's the last thing I remember she goes Daddy and I just blacked out and hit the floor and woke up like a puddle of my own blood just like went face first yeah yeah and not not like drunk on anything just just literally lack of sleep and exhaustion and I just like out cold like like that and I went to the doctors like oh what ended up got scanned for everything and nothing see wrong I was just so burnt out that I just collapsed you know and uh yeah yeah so that was the thing so if you notice like when I first wrote on Twitter a lot of it's just about relaxing you know because uh yeah you know they say health is wealth and it's like you try to do so much you know especially as a dad especially I think when your children are younger you know when they're in my you know I don't I don't know if you feel the same way but it's like when your kids are in that age of like you know 5 to 10 or so you just feel like oh I gotta achieve so much or do so much and um yeah I think a big part is learning to relax for me personally to sleep getting to sleep more um you know and just realize like it's more important for me to spend time with my family go for walks in the park and and just you know just take care of my mental health you know too so yeah mental health is definitely one of the biggest aspects of my coaching that I focus on obviously you're gonna need the physical and the nutritional but I've noticed that a lot of Fitness coaches neglect the mental side of things and I feel like that's one of the differentiators for me as a coach in general but yeah I the the mental side is brutal and I think it's even more important nowadays than it ever has been just because of all of the bombardment of stuff that's constantly flashing in our guys and the screens everywhere and even just driving down the road the Billboards and everything I don't know how Thailand is but I can't stop the ads everywhere here in America oh yeah if you get into the city it's like that too it's like in a Sci-Fi movie like you know filtering out yeah exactly like we now live in the future like that we saw when we were kids you know uh yeah that was one of the things I appreciated about I want to say Rio de Janeiro and Brazil but don't quote me on that but they banned outside advertisements so you it's just Serene I mean there's the buildings and stuff obviously but just not that constant bombardment of trying to be sold garbage I don't know if that's still there anymore but I remember seeing I read a news article about it I'm like oh my God these guys are awesome I would I would love that I think eventually it's got to come full circle you know eventually it'll have to slow down you know I guess we're getting off topic from from Fitness here but you know it's like uh yeah yeah just for um because they you know all the sort form content right that's big now too with everything and Tick Tock I think eventually it's all going to come back around to people are gonna burn out on it you know it's just people are starting to filter it out and it won't the people who are pumping it you know for their ends will eventually find less profit from it I hope you know it'll fade you know yeah yeah hopefully yeah yeah well you said primary school teacher that's the the little kids are like not that's I don't I don't know my wife's a teacher you know the differentiator what grade does your wife teach can I ask whatever he's first grade right now oh okay all right I I'm with four grade four yep yep so yeah a little bit older I I like working with those kids because they're they're they're old enough you can kind of talk about more cool stuff with them you know like okay the how life started on the earth like oh cool and they like to hear it but they're young enough they don't have the attitude of teenagers yet yeah so it's still like you know it's of the middle ground you know yeah yeah I'm speaking to uh I was just hanging out with her and some of her teacher friends the other day and I just felt so bad for the Middle School teachers
they're just like a different breed of us people because not only the middle school kids smell horrible but just their attitude although all the hormones raging around and and light switches sometimes with how they feel yep I taught grade seven for like one semester I think just trying to help out with another teacher left and uh yeah it was tough one kid like hated me because I said the wrong thing once during his presentation I was like sorry it's been a well very very totally different very sensitive you know I was like I thought they're older I thought they'd need a no no version so
well let me get back to some of these questions I'll stop talking and slow down um let's see how what's your approach towards nutrition um for your family and yourself I know a lot of Asian cultures I don't I don't know about Thailand but I'm just thinking of India I guess where they're predominantly vegetarian um how is it and in Thailand I love Thai food so I can only imagine it's better at the source yeah yeah it is good but a lot of it's the street food which is not that prepared that great because the oils and the MST but it tastes amazing tastes amazing yeah so um but but to be honest like um our family is kind of funny because we all eat different things and so yeah yeah and it can be weird because um I I used to be very paleo like paleo style you know back in the day and that's how I first got into nutrition too because I I first noticed I was trying to help one one student a girl who's very obese and I was trying to get her to help lose weight so I said hey if you don't drink you know a soda or sweet drinks after lunch I won't either you know try to make a deal there and then um I stopped doing it too and all of a sudden I stopped getting an afternoon crash anymore you know yeah it's just like every afternoon about an hour after lunch you're like oh I just boom you know slum and as soon as I just stopped drinking Coca-Cola that starts happening I was like oh why did that happen so then I started researching it and it's like oh wow processed food is not good for you you know of like you know my early 30s and I finally realized this and um yeah so that's how I got into paleo and fasting and um yeah yeah so fasting now is probably I'm I stopped being as strict on you know what I eat just because for social reasons and for my family too uh my daughter's a very picky eater so I've never yeah yeah I don't want to emphasize not eating with her I just want her eating you know and I try to yeah yeah she's also very against meat just naturally even though both me and my wife eat meat she doesn't want to or
I feel like when they're younger it's more animal related I'm not I'm not fully sure to be honest um it's my sister is a vegetarian and I I still remember to be honest I think about being a vegetarian a little more too just to join my daughter and because it's not Humane for the animals either I don't want to get into dangerous moral debates here but you know and I still eat eat meat too but um health reasons I'm I think you know from the it's healthier to eat past your raised you know organic meat for your own health but for the animal's sake both moral and especially with the current food system it's very I mean I didn't eat beef I think for like months after I drove past a cattle slaughter Farm I think out west you know um but but yeah but for my daughter like just it's uh tricky it's got lots of eggs lots of cheese this kind of stuff that's where I try to get her protein and those nutrients in and some vitamins get some omega-3 and uh after covid we had it in the vitamin D and the gumdrops and so try to supplement and olive oil always get the extroverts and you know real stuff you know sort of try to put that into everything sort of give a little extra boost um but um I got my wife a little into the the iffing just like a little bit and she liked it but it's hard to keep but usually that is where I sort of put my emphasis on but I started to get too skinny and I I tend to geek out too much in our nutrition and not spend enough time on the exercise it helped me yeah yeah yeah so that that's my problem that I ran into the past few years especially yeah during covet I hurt my shoulder too because I started trying to lift weights like I was 25 again yeah yeah he's like oh I'm just stuck in the house all day I'm gonna buy a bunch of free weights and a lot of solder presses you know again and like oh it really hurts I could I better just find these stretches online on YouTube and that'll that'll fix it and like oh God now it's really you know and uh it was actually not until I started doing some Qigong that it finally started working really well again you know so yeah yeah so all they can do is pull-bone swings for like two years and that was it yeah
is would you say kettlebells is your predominant um form of exercise at this moment do you still do any barbell training or anything outside of that I'm ironically I never thought I would but I've started using Nautilus machines at the gym um I I never thought I would because it's on that functional thing but I ran across a book years ago it was um Body by science by Doug McGruff okay and it was all about working out once a week and the thing that worked for me is for that solder thing is it's super slow so it's like a two minute set where each rep is like 10 to 20 seconds okay and um Don at a weight that is to failure so let's say you're doing like the five core movements you're doing you know like the um the downward pull forward press you know uh horizontal row and um overhead press and you're doing it just like one set for each one it's a super like you know 10 to 20 seconds per rep at a at a weight that you'll fail before two minutes between one and a half two minutes and I noticed like it doesn't make you that much stronger but you do feel good and it never hurts anything I can do that once a week and I started doing that and it feels good so far how did you cross a book um I think just online I I was just looking for stuff you know just randomly digging around and um so I've been doing that again and then I just try to do one kettlebell and just walk a lot and that's about it and um yeah yeah so it's a little underrated yeah yeah but um but yeah so it's just that that's about it for me but most of my exercise now is all about sounds weird but just mental and physical energy so it's like um I just want to feel good and I just like like I want my daily movements to never feel tiring both mentally and physically like um you know I just want to feel like I have clean consistent energy all day and I'm old enough now that I I've played around with food so much and nutrition and keto and and the exercises that I do that I now I'm at like a good place like okay this is what I need to just feel good all day you know and not get tired carrying books or like walking up four flights of stairs and you know that's sort of where I want to be that's uh that's an amazing outcome though most people never find that that's that's you know for most clients it's just I just want to feel good all day they don't want to be super muscle bound they're not competing in Fitness competitions they're not doing CrossFit Games they they just want to walk up steps and not be winded and be able to chase their kids and pick them up and it's I think people they over complicate it that that's all it is they over complicated it's just like you don't need to do that much the hardest part is finding the time for what do they call it zone two right it's um you know what I mean it's like um so you need to somehow walk quickly enough throughout the week you get about three hours of that you know and then you also need to do something really hard two to three times a week and that hard doesn't have to be like three hours lifting weights be like okay lift weights really hard one day you do some HIIT and that's like less than 10 minutes of the Kettlebell you know and then you know what I mean and then I don't know if that's just me personally but I feel like yeah and then that's that's the biggest secret like really easy yeah it's like do it like oh I need to figure out this new move it's like just do like something really hard a couple times a week that's sort of different than each other and then walk a lot and that that is you know and yeah yeah there's a 95 of the general population as far as their Fitness needs it's it's really it really is pretty basic overall but it kind of ties back in with what we were talking about earlier just the constant bombardment on social media with all of these fitfluencers and all these people that are super not natural and they just edit their photos and all that stuff and then that that's it starts breaking down people mentally like oh these people look so much happier than me they look happy right now but it's all facade yeah yeah like like even at the gym my wife was saying it's like that's not an Hitt work I was like you know what time it is only eight minutes it's like oh my exam they have hour-long HIIT workouts like that's not an h-i-iit workout I don't know what that is but that's something else you know yeah yeah torture I don't know what yeah so it's like yeah I think I think a lot of people just need to learn their bodies and think about it that way like I'm gonna do something really hard twice a week you know what I mean and like one of those is kind of slow and picking things up and one is kind of fast and really intense and you know what I mean if you that maybe this yeah that's the way I think about it now it's a great like overarching theme for everything like because when you boil and distill it down to its Essences that's that's basically what it is and obviously like I said if you're if you want to be more advanced or compete and stuff it it's different but like 95 of the population you're set you're gonna be fine you're gonna outperform the rest of the population if you do these small simple things few times a week just from how I don't know I don't know if lack of a better word how lazy everybody else is they're just sitting here just watching TV I don't really know this but I'm just anecdotic well I think part of it too like you're talking about Ford like online it's not just Fitness like everything like people see like oh I want to be like that point zero one percent but if you're just happy being in that five percent you're already like set you know what I mean so if you realign your goals instead of being like Oh I want to be like you know what's his name uh the the the CrossFit guy he's won all those games or something like you're always comparing yourself to somebody like that it's like oh I want to be like that it's like you could set that goal if you for example had you know 12 free hours a day every day to do that you know what I mean so but if you said aim for like you know somebody who's kind of healthy and can you know run you know 5K in under 30 minutes you know that's already better than 90 of or more of the population you know I'm gonna keep you healthy and there you know if your kids you know yeah so how would you how do you keep yourself motivated throughout all this um obviously you spoke about burnout earlier and I've 100 experienced that um building startups on the side while I'm working full-time and now we got the little baby thrown in the mix as well but what do you yourself um attribute as your biggest motivators especially days where it's just like ah I I don't I don't want to do this um
well to be honest like I I will just skip days but I do regret it later I think my biggest motivators are one my wife who's gonna like bug me about it and just like you have to take care of yourself you have to get and like do something every day it's like did you did you do the Kettlebell thing today you know or or the other one is just like I'll notice like I have more aches and pains not like major but just like you know all my knee feels kind of like stiff when I'm walking up the stairs like oh I didn't I skipped that that they go in the gym this week you know right I didn't stretch at the end of the day you know for like three days in a row or something like that you know and then I'll just it'll just be that alone my personality just doesn't you know I think I think you're probably similar have like a perfectionist personality and it just bugs you if something in your own body isn't working the way you want it to you know what I mean it's just like yeah yeah and so that that is probably it sounds funny but that's a big motive here for me I'm definitely the exact same way especially if I have control over like if if the example your new example is like I forgot my Mobility or I just skipped my Mobility for the past week like that's 100 on me there's there's literally nothing on the outside that could have done that for me and that's that's what I don't really use motivation because that's fleeting but yeah it's a lack of a better word that's I've just used discipline for it because I'm I have I mean I have to do it because I'll just feel like garbage if I don't know it's true well I think it was was it Tony Robbins who said like um you know like fear is a much better motivator than you know why you know what I mean it's like knowing like oh I'm gonna like be angry at myself I don't do that it's like there's a better motivator than yeah yeah wanting that that thing yeah yeah it really is it's uh similar for investing like people if you make a hundred bucks it feels great but if you lose 100 bucks it's like five times it's devastating for you it's it's
watch out for for anything threat so you've mentioned I think you said Qigong what's that is that what she said yeah I don't do it that much like probably once a month I just sort of spread stuff around um but it was it was David Beaudry was the guy I learned it from I ran across his YouTube videos and I bought just this course like um he does a lot of really cool stuff and I just got like a quick course from him um and I just started doing a couple of the exercises and for the first time in two years my Soldier just opened up and I've done everything under the sun I mean I hadn't actually been to a doctor but I mean I must have watched every YouTube video and thing and you know I know that's probably not the best route but you know what I mean in rehab this rehab that the bands on the door a little bit about what Qigong is I'm only familiar with it in like a martial arts kind of sense but I don't I don't have a grasping I don't really know T gong is basically like the what you'd call like the medicinal aspect of Thai C so you see the you know P the old people in the morning moving really slowly you know like that sort of thing where they're going from one side the other Qigong is actually it's much more raw focused on the energy aspect of it interesting I'm sorry um but um the uh the uh I might get a little we're here I don't know if I'll push some people away with this but um I've been meditating for so long I sometimes go through a few rabbit holes of exploring different things and I got into you know energy healing type of things and um there's some things I started to experience that I could not deny there's definitely something going on in these modalities and when SI gong you really want to focus on the energy moving through your body and just moving you know any blockage is getting undone and flowing and while you're moving your body and just imagining this sort of cycling through you and and when I started doing that just a few times my Soldier really just just healed afterwards it is it's not a hundred percent but it's 90 better you know from where it was before and that happened only after like the the second time I did it I had to see just like fixed you know yeah so right I don't know but David Bowie is very happy who had told him about it he's like what what video was it what what was it like it's this one right here this was like really yeah I don't know what happened maybe it's just luck it just decided that day to start working but it had nothing to do with the Qigong but but um yeah I remember the exact time it's like wow what happened uh yeah that's great I mean if it works yeah exactly and I I still barely ever do it because I it sounds horrible I have like you say with burnout you're trying to do too many things at once and you get caught up in that self-improvement thing like oh I've got a you know drink 10 glasses of water do tigong meditate work out you know every day you know and read 17 books and you know uh so um I gotta yeah not get too wrapped up in it but um definitely get caught up in that rat race sometime um just for the nature of my personality um I'm a computer scientist so I approach most things algorithmically and I always look for ways to optimize and that always carries Over For Better or Worse into my real life so I'm always looking at oh maybe I can go up these steps this way and it'll be faster exactly what you're saying like I I'm I again I blame this on Tim Ferriss but I uh read so many morning routines of individuals I look up to and just idolize I guess for lack of a better word but I'm like okay this one fits here for me and I I've got spreadsheets full of morning routines that I try out and um I'd say up until like maybe the past year or two I've kind of just like pumped the brakes on all of it as much and I definitely approach things still algorithmically just so it can free up my mind to look at other things and I'll just follow the steps and that's accomplished but that that also takes up a lot of time to find the optimization and now I'm just looking at this is good enough and I attribute 100 of that to becoming a father I don't have the time to sit there and pour over optimizing morning routines and I don't even know if it does anything but I enjoy it so I'll it never bothered me but yeah yeah being a dad is a Time suck it's you know it's great Affairs is not a father you know what I mean so it's like you know yeah
so I think about that one quite often um again now that I am a father um just how many people that I did idolize and look up to and just appreciate as a human and like oh wait they weren't they're not dead so I have to reassess and take everything with a grain of salt because they didn't have this gigantic chunk of their time and life that's heavily influenced by keeping somebody else alive like that's a that's a good thing yeah I'm glad to hear you say that I'm 100 with you like um and to be honest the more you look at these people's lives and you can sort of you know as a big staring like okay how many hours a day do you spend here do some here and like something like okay so here's my you know time I get to spend my family we go shopping together once a week on Sunday and it's like well that's not the life I want to live you know what I mean so it's just like um when you see you know it's like The Grass Is Always Greener and um yeah on the other side you know too and yeah yeah and a lot of those things aren't even applicable if you if you have a job so like if I was like self-employed or something like that or or if I was managing a team of people then some of those might be more applicable but um a lot of my day is spent in you know essentially crisis mode as a primary school teacher and as a dad you know it's like oh okay this this this this you know so yeah the kids could email you all the time they'd always be high priority alert emails and you know exactly yeah yeah oh God that's funny so your your meditation I think was one of the first things that I noticed when we started interacting on Twitter just because I've had so much value in my meditation practice and you've got another 10 plus years on me on that one so what initially got you interested in that you said you were 18 19 ish somewhere around that age from from Boston or from Massachusetts how do you get involved with meditation up there well it's um first thing I want to say is that just because I got 10 more years in you doesn't mean that's quality years either so like I know if you're putting in 30 minutes a day I'm putting in like five to ten minutes a day you know so I mean like uh yeah yeah so but um but yeah yeah it's um it's it's just the sort of thing that I did start to neglect it maybe a few years ago and I really when I went back to it I felt so much better A lot physically too which sounds funny but um it was um but but anyway like how I got into it though which which philosophy um because yeah when I was a teenager I came across fritsov capras the Tao of physics and um yeah it was just all about this physicist who you know he yes he did eat mushrooms too but he he went into you know really um reading about all the taoism and Buddhist philosophies and he found all the things in modern physics that essentially were reaffirming those beliefs and he just and so I I got curious about it because I loved cosmology and um philosophy at the time like I I devoured it when I was younger like I just I just read all the Plato's Republic you know by the time it was like 19 like in all yeah but like but so then I I ran into the the meditation stuff and I just got really into East Asian philosophy I'm just sorry um and um so I just started meditating more from a curiosity standpoint like I want to understand the universe and this is the thing that I can use to know yeah as you get into like oh wait it does it work like that but um but the thing is is like um I feel the the main benefit more than just before myself it's for other people like I when I was like in my early 20s I was you know just delivering pizza and there's a friend of mine and um he I don't know it's okay except if you'd ever hear that someone say his name but he gotten some bad stuff going to Raves and stuff like that and he took some bad something got like what you they called it a k hole back then in his brain you know and he started to go to a psychologist start taking all these drugs just to help himself with the anxiety and he just said to me one day like ah I saw these monks one day on TV I wish I could just be like them and I said well you want to learn yeah and so you know yeah we just went down to the river one night after work maybe to sit down and I was like okay this is how you do it and we just sat there and I went in through it and he started doing it just every day you just do it and within a week he didn't have to take any of the medication anymore and within a couple weeks it didn't actually psychologist anymore and he felt all better you know um so it's the benefit of meditation comes I I always tell this to people and like oh it's it's a lot of work it's like it has very huge returns for small amounts of effort and then if you want to go deeper you know then it takes a lot more work but of course you know there's also much higher benefits for that but as far as Health both physical and mental together it takes so little time there's no better return on investment I think for physical and mental health and meditating a little bit every day you know um absolutely yeah I mean yeah even just a minute I mean just when you're first starting oh the minute it seems it's it's simple it's a it's a great getting your feet wet kind of thing but if you actually put in the conscious effort and decide I'm gonna try this and that's that's my story with it um I thought it was a bunch of hippie [ __ ] but again I'm always willing to learn and try and experiment with things so I'm like all right I'm gonna dedicate an entire month 30 minutes a day like I'm not gonna even go small I'm just gonna go straight 30 minutes a day and it was it was nonsense for the first couple weeks because I wasn't I didn't know what I was doing either I think I used a a meditation I had guided meditation apps at that point but um after the second week or so there was definitely a a noticeable shift in my mental well-being and then after that month it was significant and it was just like a hockey stick graph as far as like yup I'm fine mentally and uh ever since then it's been uh super important for my mental well-being for sure and I forgot what I was going with that but um yeah
awesome yeah yeah it's um that's the thing is it it becomes popular for everything now but um like yeah I forgot what it was like um I just I went to the doctor and my blood pressure the first time was like pushing up over 140 and it's when I kind of stopped meditating and I started meditating and I went again it was right back to normal again you know so it's just like and this is five minutes a day you know in the morning you know so it's like yeah I I'd like to do more again but it's just yeah yeah at times I envied putting in 30 minutes a day I can't yeah sometimes I do at night sometimes um yeah I would say more or less I get every day um it's Hit or Miss now that my wife's home for the summer but um speaking of do they do that in Thailand for school so you got the summer off or we do we already had it it's in April so our summer is um April break yeah yeah yeah just a different different summaries but to speak to your back then yeah yeah we opened in June so we had March April and May and um that was our big summer break yeah yeah so we we just started back up again I'm curious um I know originally Summers off in the the States was for farming like you need your kids to help out for the crops is it do you think it's similar for that in Thailand as far as the timing goes or is it kind of just like an adopted thing that we seem to have influenced the rest of the world with I know I I might have something to do with planting so so the rain starts to come that's where they have like song Crown the big water throwing party is in a beginning April because they're they're getting ready to plant all the rice for the year but that's the opposite America they're getting ready to harvest right you know so um yeah yeah yeah so I'm not really sore um to be honest yeah it was just a random thought yeah yeah have you so I know again like you said your your Fitness related stuff has been predominantly more focused since you become a father but have you ever competed in any [Music] um events I guess like I know you said you you're not you don't really do endurance stuff like uh marathons or any of that that stuff no no I I'd like to one day to be honest like I'm starting you know like you're talking about earlier about being all over the place you know trying to do startups left and right you know learning web design you know while teaching and um now I'm just starting to back off all that stuff you know and and even with with Twitter like I was telling you I'm sort of like calming down with it again and like um you know I'm just I'm just gonna focus more on just enjoying life and doing things I like like I'm gonna finish writing this book I'm like halfway through and I'm just gonna focus on my own health and there's a there's a couple guys at my school who run marathons um one of them one of them got first place in like a half marathon recently in Bangkok um yeah yeah so I'd like to yeah yeah I'd like to put more emphasis on that in the future but might be a while might be a while before that happens we're a runner other than just a generic Sports and training for whatever uh activity I was doing for that but this last year so I kicked it up a notch with my focused running efforts I never like I said I never had a running coach so I I hired one just so I could understand the Dynamics and how to properly train for running cool I mentioned in my last podcast that I would just run as hard as I could for as long as I could and that was my running training for that and now I have a much better understanding of how to build it up slowly and make it more sustainable because I ran uh I ran my first ultra marathon a couple months ago and I remember yeah I remember it was brutal oh geez yeah
the endurance stuff is interesting it's after I had been doing it for like four or five months which is minuscule compared to all these other endurance athletes but um I feel like I might have had a leg up on someone that might have been at the exact same time just because of my meditation practice I say that because I notice endurance is about 85 mental um the training itself because you usually run pretty slow it's a casual jog like we could have this conversation while I was doing my endurance running training while doing that for four hours is super boring to me I I that was that was my biggest issue with it is I don't I was just bored out of my mind because I also run it like like a machine I don't use headphones or I don't listen to anything I just I need to I need to have my awareness for the surroundings for where I live gotta want to get hit by a car you know um yeah but the the mental fortitude I think like I said I feel like I had a leg up on anyone who had been trained for the exact same time frame as I have just I attribute all of that to my meditation practice because it was very meditative um you get you get the rhythm going and it's almost like a uh what's that meditation where they just repeat the same thing over and over um well I forgot it too it's the one it's the one that became popular um I said one that's focused on being in the zone like Alpha brain waves yeah there's like um yeah like traditional like meditation though is where you go deeper like down like Theta but you're still conscious you know uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yep it was similar to the um it just slipped my mind but I never I never tried that one anyways but I I figured that would be similar to what it was because it was it was just the Cadence back and forth of my Pace was very meditative but again doing that for four hours is just like um this is brutal it's so boring
I I would have trouble too I one thing I like is mountain biking I I would see if I got back to the States I would try I would try doing something like that yeah I like the the movement but the yeah I know what you mean about just running slowly I I would have difficulty yeah yeah good good on you to be able to do it yeah like uh yeah yeah because when I run I want to run I don't want to yeah the only way I was able to do it is because I had already paid for the race that's what we talked about I didn't want to lose the money so
[Music] that's what it is oh what is it yep that's it transcendental yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I was curious about that one do you do you predominantly do like Zen or zazen or well I the thing is like when I got into it is all through books so like I've never even been to an official like retreat um but then it was until I came to Thailand I had a few experiences and people I met that were very very Advanced and they kind of saved me with a lot of pointers because I was yeah yeah because when you do it all on your own you're very like self-taught you run into questions a lot you know especially if you do it for a while and you need sometimes somebody's like so what what what do I do now you know like is that supposed to just keep going this path or you know you know but um but yeah when I started out it was all just basic breath Focus meditation and the way I see it or the way I understand is there's two main things you want to develop and it's um essentially focused meditation and mindfulness meditation and you basically you can practice them separately but they're both interrelated so you need to be able to focus you know for example you'll Focus test on the breathing or anything at all whether it's Zen you're staring at an object you know you have your eyes open but let's say in the the more like terravada that I I do even though I I'm interested in like Tibetan stuff I've never really done the practices that much that they talk about um but but the basic sort of terravada distance is all focus on my breathing and I mostly focus on the diaphragm um yeah just because for me personally I'd like the that sort of focus um one game changer for me is like digging into some old texts was um that you don't have to make the focus on anything physical so you can focus on feelings or emotions and there's an interesting one it's kind of we were talking about like you can focus on the concept like like loving kindness yeah yeah and you can focus that and that was like overwhelming for me I almost felt like I I like um couldn't do that every day because it was like you just focus so much on like a good concept the same way you'd focus on your breathing with complete attention and it just opens all that up you know which is incredible you know because once you know you've been doing a long time too and like how much sort of and don't get too woo-woo you know but the energy centers just kind of just can open up sometimes and um the the main area that I should spend more time in is the mindfulness so I spend too much emphasis on Focus um when I should be spending more time on mindfulness it's really the real practice of Enlightenment goes you know that the Buddha wanted you to stay on if you're always staying on focused it feels very good and it is good for you you know it and it will you know that's the thing it'll lower your blood pressure you will feel good you will be happier more mostly but um you won't overcome or fully train your mind to break out of this habitual conditioning once you go back to the real world if that makes any sense so I am lazy about that part of meditation that's one thing I should spend more time in you know yeah
because I fairly recently maybe these past six months or so um started experimenting with meta meditation and it was it was a very noticeable shift in how I treated people physically or online and it I mean it was great I'm not I'm not an [ __ ] anymore but I it flares out sometimes and uh just I don't know it just made me like love everybody and everything um again avoid avoiding the woo-woo stuff but it met the meditation I honestly feel like it helped um I'm not not that I was having troubles but it helped my marriage my relationship with my wife I I guess that's what I should say but she even commented on it once she's like you're like a lot more mushy recently I'm like yeah don't tell anyone [Laughter] do a lot of uh like negative visualizations from like the stoicism practice where okay I'll focus on the emotion of loss or I'll focus on the emotion of um how I would feel if my whole family died today and I lost my job the same day and I couldn't handle that yeah yeah those ones are I don't do those quite often but I I appreciate them and I appreciate the thought behind them from the stoic belief of just hardening and strengthening my mental fortitude and it it could be that bad so it's it's less of an impact on me I feel if it ever comes true um again I don't know it's all thought experiments but at the same time I do feel like there is something to thought experiments as far as conditioning the mind and it's similar to working out too I'll uh if I'm going to do an event or like the endurance races I'll I'll prepare myself mentally I'll I'll run the race in my mind and I'll already be somewhat amped up and I know this is gonna suck but we're gonna we're gonna get through it and it's it's somewhat similar to the negative visualization practices that I do again I don't do those too often because they are brutal and if you actually put your heart and soul into it and let yourself feel those things like I've cried for those ones before and I'm sure you can imagine like you're you actually letting yourself feel what it would be like if those terrible tragic things happen but again like I said I feel like it's beneficial for my mental fortitude because it it kind of dampens it if it ever were to occur and it's not just not just the the family ones but like I'll do I'll do a negative visualizations for a lot of things like that but okay yeah to be honest I I'm I have difficult that kind of stuff I mean to be honest um it gets too personal it's like my mom passed away when I was a child and um you know when I was gonna get married to my wife I had this unbelievable panic attack like I never had before it's about 15 years ago 14 years yeah 14 years ago and um you know I was just like I can't let anybody this close to me ever again because if anything happens to them I will be broken you know because like when that half my mom is a child something inside me conditioned myself to keep distance you know that's never going to let anybody that close ever again and there's like this panic attack when I was like sitting somewhere it's like Jesus I'm gonna get married this person is going to be so close to me I can't let that happen it's not you know what I mean and uh yeah so I would say I would have difficult I said even when my daughter was born there was a period of about one year where I had difficulty meditating at all because fears would come into my mind and I could not be okay with them you know like when you're meditating be mindful like see something horrible and be okay with that until it floats away again yeah and as incapable of being mindful even I would see pictures in a newspaper during like be a war somewhere and I would see a picture of like children in a ditch you know in a newspaper and I would see my daughter's face on them and now you can think I'm a crazy person but but um yeah you know it was about a year after our daughter was born so like um I still have these these things ah I said too much but uh yeah yeah but um but I gotta say one thing background about the meta meditation though this is from earlier is um I think it's important to bring up because people I think have taken a lot of the East Asian meditation and they've taken a lot of the heart out of it so I I feel like you don't realize when you see about characters like the Buddha or all these people they were very compassionate people and and you know like whereas in Western religion it's like Jesus is all about the love you know it's all about you know he is all about giving the love to everybody but I think if you took the Buddha and Jesus and you put them together right they would be pretty similar General temperaments I have a feeling the Buddha might be a little more chilled and relaxed you know yeah Jesus might flip over a few more tables but you know but they would have a similar belief structure I think sometimes the people need to do more of that meta meditation you know and not focus as much on the Zen style you know what I mean I think I think I agree yeah yeah I think I think Buddhism could use that in the west more so yeah yeah again it was similar to when I initially started meditating when I first heard of meta I'm like oh you want me to like think happy thoughts about people I don't know like that's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard
but again one of the things I love about myself is while I initially thought that I'm still gonna try it because I don't know everything and I'm willing to try it experience it and make up my own mind actually experience it to have an opinion on I'm I'm not just gonna say oh that's dumb and then move on I'm gonna try it and it might still be dumb but I'm gonna I'm gonna give it a go at least the old College try right yeah yeah
I really like meta meditation because of that and it did I don't do like blood work I'm not that crazy of a biohacker but I feel like if I were to have done it before and after a month of meta I feel like there would be some bio indicators um of I don't know because like I said I don't I don't do that stuff but I know mentally it I was able to understand and empathize with people that I never thought I would before and I just had like a profound connection with human beings um and that was nice for me because sometimes I feel like a robot so
I'm glad yeah yeah well a lot of it's like when you see about you know oh like love everybody even though you don't know them you might hear philosophically like oh everything is interconnected and there is no self so if you really accept that then you know you should treat everybody like they are you you know but when you look at it from that perspective like meta like oh that's what that means you know what I mean so it's just like a more feeling based you know philosophical yeah I don't know I'm rambling now [Music] you said your wife kind of pushes you once in a while uh as far as your related stuff does that mean that she participates with you or um does she do her own thing do you guys do like I don't know how old your daughter is but do you does she like do any sort of Fitness related stuff with you guys not too much my wife usually goes to the gym she works out more than me but it's it's weird like um I don't know it's mean to say but for some reason I'm more fit than her even though I work out a lot less um I don't know whether like something well they have that too yeah yeah yeah but um yeah I don't know I don't know but um but my daughter though is funny you know I have like the the 16 kilogram kettlebell and um even when she was like five years old I turned around once she was just picking it up and deadlifting it's like Daddy look at me it's like oh my God you're gonna break your foot you know and she was she was just doing like carry it around with her because you'd see me doing it you know and um yeah yeah yeah so that was fun that was fun but but um yeah I just try to keep her active as much as I can but I'm I'm sometimes at a loss because I didn't grow up in the city and um we go to the park and just walk around and try to climb trees if we find stuff falling over I just try to get her use I one big thing is um like if it's raining out I I try to get like oh let's go outside in the rain you know and I wanted to get that idea of like you know being okay with things that other people are afraid of that can't that aren't bad at all you know it's like you know since I I you know I see from a long time like as a teacher the kid's like oh I'll go in the rain I'll get sick and then they get sick but if you think oh go in the rain and it's fun that you don't get sick you know and I see that pattern over and over and over again so it I just want to instill that attitude in her of like you know she is a strong person and you know not to be afraid of small things if that makes any sense and I'm definitely a firm believer in the power of the Mind as you obviously are as well if not only if I'll go in the rain I'll get sick but just in general self-fulfilling prophecies like anytime my oldest says oh I can't do that I'm like I mean you can you just you just have to try like you don't know that you can't you've never done this before don't start off with the initial mindset of I can't you it's just setting up roadblocks left and right for life and life's already hard enough you got to try to figure out how to smooth that out a little bit and having the uh the mental fortitude and understanding of I it's going to be difficult maybe but I can actually do this I try to instill that in anyone I meet but especially her right now because she's so impressionable and she's she's uh 10 right now so she's gonna start getting to the age where her peers are gonna have a massive influence on her and I I don't know kids very well I'm not around them but um I see a lot of stuff online and that's my only frame of reference so it's skewed a bit but I don't like what I see and um I see a lot of children in general just giving up too quickly and they don't they don't know how to problem solve or persevere through difficult things they'll just like all right and then Mom and Dad will come in and solve it for them and I know it frustrates the hell out of my daughter but I'm building her up because I'm not gonna solve it for her I'll help her whenever she gets stuck I'll guide her but I'm never gonna give her the answer and again that frustrates the hell out of her butt I I feel like it's important because problem solving and critical thinking are severely lacking in any of the peers of hers that I've met and I see it in her as well but again I don't I'm not around kids a lot so I don't know if it's a a thing but um I just feel like whatever I've seen online or again with just her peers it's it could just be the age group as well but they severely lack problem solving skills and I it's kind of baffling to me because I feel like it's partly the education system but again I don't know I'm in that education system I oh
it's like It's Tricky like um it's also so I'm in East Asia and this is like a conflict I get into with other teachers and what they say and this is the track that America started on about 20 years ago too they are basically modeling the East Asian or you could even say Siamese was it mansourian like the fir the idea of like tests to get where you're going and teach to the test and what is always America part is the opposite of that the creativity is like I think there's a an interview of Putin right from Russia I once saw and and it was like years ago and he's like so what is it that you admire about America so this is like their creativity like in Russia nobody will just think of these things and they just think of things all the time out of nowhere and you know what I mean and this is something that Americans have that is a unique skill you know what I mean and I feel like they are you know America is sacrificing that if they focus too much on you know this style of teaching you know what I mean so there's a big insecurity marriage like oh we're worse at math than everybody else or you know what I mean you know so like oh we need to make sure they they memorize more you know what I mean but you have you can't be good at everything so you know the idea of like you have to choose what you will be good at and what you will not be good at and like I've talked about this with um you know old co-worker of mine and he he's American but he's like Thai also and he's he's like well yeah but if we do this then they won't get as good grades on the University exams and then they won't get as good jobs and they will make less money you know I was like yeah but they could but the country as a whole will have more interesting problem solvers who will be more capable human beings that make better decisions throughout their life and have better social skills and better citizens who vote better you know and you know what I mean like all these things you know you know like more active involved citizens instead of you know passive test takers you know what I mean it's also the test taking it makes the kids too selfish if you know what I mean so all this like oh extra classes on Saturday and this and that and it's like their only job in life is to get super good grades so they can make good money and to me that's like a very Hollow existence you know um yeah yeah so um but but it's hard to go up against that when you have the attitude of like this long-term thing of like you know oh they have to become a doctor you know it's like I think doctors are great right well I mean I have problems with a lot of things in the medical world do but um but it's basically um you have to accept that it's okay to do a lot of project-based learning and just expose kids to lots of ideas and things to make them curious and ask questions and you know want to explore things on their own and yeah they they won't be able to do the times table as well as another kid you know they won't but that's okay because that's what calculators are for and now ai is for and you know um yeah so I completely agree my wife Echoes my sentiments on it as much as she can um just because of it's such a rigid structured thing and she's much more creative and she's she was an art Miner as well so she oh she loves it she loves all that stuff and she incorporates a lot of it into her classroom and again she's got first graders it's kind of like a fun environment as well anyways it's not nearly as structured and rigid as it is when they get older but even the stuff that she has to do this doesn't make any sense why why do I need to like shove this down their throat so relentlessly right now it just they're little kids little little kids let them paint stuff and let's go on field trips and look at bugs and exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the emphasis on test taking that that was always my struggle in school for sure um I don't know it was uh it was just wasteful to me because I'm definitely much more creative and outside the box thinking and I feel like I'm not trying to toot my own horn but I feel like more intelligent people don't fit into that rigidity of structured test takings I have to do all of this nonsense to get the best college application acceptance and yeah I was also very driven by money when I was younger as well so that's not good I wouldn't advertise that for anyone anymore yeah well it's it's good you do have to you know I wish I cared more about money when I was younger
but but to be honest one in defense of the education system you know teachers get so much crap all the time but at the same time we are constantly doing our best to make things fun while people are saying they have to hit this Benchmark you know and it's your job to do that you know and there's all these different people and different interests and you're kind of stuck in the middle and everybody wants something a little bit different and they're just kind of surrounding you at all times you know and it's you're just yeah yeah just trying to do your best that you can you know so but the administration on this side and then the parents Poland is different things and all that some parents want tests all the time and they want to make sure their kid is at this level of certain this or that you know and other parents just want their kids to know go out and dissect some leaves and you know go hang around and do like team building activities you know and stuff like that you know um and other parents want an hour night of homework for their 10 year old you know and uh you know so yes It's Tricky It's Tricky balancing and all you know and then there's a new administration every couple years and they'll literally do a 180 on whatever they want you know and uh you're just left trying to figure it all out you know so yeah yeah and it's harder in America too because yeah anyway yeah yeah
I already think I know the answer you never taught in the US right it was no nope I was gonna ask how the uh well I don't it doesn't matter how is the physical fitness education in Thailand do they have uh I I might again my only frame of reference is us so there was a lot for me um also because our school is kind of poor so PE was an easy one to do because you just run around and stuff yeah
physical education requirements for Thai kids um well I'm in Bangkok and I'm at I'm at an international program so the kids there are it's a pretty Academic School as starting in grade four where I am so up until around grade three they try to post a more play-based environment and then they sort of switch gears around my grade and there's a lot of conflicting areas there but they get PE twice a week okay and uh they have a lot of different PE teachers but they they put a lot of emphasis on individual skills but not a lot on Sports which is kind of a an odd thing so they have them doing a lot of like um you know for example instead of just playing basketball there's a lot of time spent like okay let's try to move the basketball up and down the cones and they'll do that for like a month practicing the individual movements you know and I think they're trying to get more into team-based stuff which would be good for the kids I think they'd have more fun too because I think PE should be a fun time for the kids too and yeah people just want to play they just want to you know what I mean especially kids you know they're just like throw a ball back and forth you know and race Chase each other you know is what kids like to do yeah in the academic side let them throw a ball at each other yeah exactly good old dodgeball yeah yeah speaking of them do they have that over where your school is
yeah yeah I I I've done it um ball is very soft though but when I took the kids out um last
last March we no it was was it Mars yeah February it was um it was getting hot and I had one girl basically pass out from the heat because they had them out in the field yeah around 11 and that was the first year after covid Maybe started to have kids pass out from the heat there's another girl from my class too last year she's in grade five now but it's during the cassette Fair the the um they're walking around there and she passed out too so before that time that would never happen so there's definitely a sift from after kovid the kids came back from two to three years if it's not moving and being in air conditioning and then Thailand is the tropics you know so then they go outside and they move a lot more and their bodies are not adapting well to it you know so it might take a while for them to really yeah yeah get back into it and so yeah screwed some still many things but yeah yeah yeah yeah so Connor I appreciate you chatting with me I'll I'll end it with uh you got any uh future goals or anything you're planning on shooting for Fitness life related it's very open-ended on purpose um yeah I am gonna finish that book I'm gonna be an author I'm going to put it next to my name but yeah yeah for for that yeah I wanna I wanna finish that book I'll see if I can keep writing and um yeah in general like that I just want to put less emphasis on hustling and trying to make money and more emphasis on just being healthy and enjoying things like writing a book and just relaxing um and for Fitness I would like to put on more muscle that is one thing I want to do so I want to put more emphasis on lifting things so especially as I get older starting to yeah I get too skinny so yeah yeah that's what I basically my main goal is that way but um how about yourself though like uh presently I have two goals in mind um Fitness related ones um next year September I'll be running the entire country of Wales um there's uh there is a ultra marathon Race I think it's five or six days long but Iran the entire country of Wales um it's called The Dragon's Back race because if you like zoom out and look at like a side cut of the country it's very mountaining and I guess it looks like a dragon's back but the elevation changes crazy it's uh it's definitely a trail running race I think it's uh I want to say it's like four or five hundred kilometers don't call me on that I don't remember so that's been that was the race that I found that got me interested in training for endurance um and that was last year that I found the so this year I was like all right I'll do a marathon and an ultra just to see if I can survive those and I I limped my way through the ultra so I knew if I didn't get hurt I could complete it so that gave me enough confidence that I'll be able to complete the dragons back and then parallel to that um I want to on a single day hit the thousand pound Club again which is uh aggregate of bench press Squat and deadlift total in a thousand pounds and then after I do that I want to run a marathon in under three hours and 30 minutes on the same day those are my two uh Fitness related goals right now as far as personal
that one's no I'm not positive yet I'm definitely working on building up my coaching as much as I can so I can transition to that full time um I'm currently a software engineer and I can't stand sitting at a desk all day especially because I work remotely now too so I don't even get to interact with people at the office that was a little bit more enjoyable but I only talked to my wife and my kids right now um okay I mean I'll hang out with friends once in a while that's why you're on Twitter see you gotta hey yeah yeah yeah it's good to meet people now to an entire Fitness related Community around being a father and the the fun that we all get to have with trying to find time and all of that fun stuff so that's my professional and personal goals that I'm working towards right now building out the dead fit brand and uh this podcast is one of the The Avenues that I'm going down so I uh I appreciate you chatting with me Connor do you have anything you want to plug I know your book's not available yet if you want people to hit you up on social media anything like that be honest my profile is a mess right now I've been all over the place um yeah yeah I'm the most unprofessional uh podcast uh but um yeah
if you want to follow my exploits less trodden path on Twitter whatever I'm up to for the for the the month you know it'll be there and um yeah that's about it so just just finishing my novel you want to follow somebody who's trying to be healthy hang out this family and finish the book that that's uh yeah you can follow along yeah I'll put all the links and stuff in the show notes make it a little easier for everybody but again Connor I really uh really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me you're a great conversationalist and I'm hoping that in the future after the podcast grows a bit we'll have a recap after you finish your book yeah yeah yeah sure yeah I'll come back yeah oh see oh man all right yeah yeah thanks bear thanks for having me on uh it's been fun it's good great all right man take it easy all right you too I'll see you
