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nordstrom.howie

Belief – Gratitude – Clarity
Show up every moment.
Discover and experience the process of living.
✌️· 🌱 · 🙏

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Stress...Response
https://soulfulsojourn.com/stress-response/
(1/2) Within minutes of the sun rising over Mauna Kea the air temperature noticeably rises. Today’s ride was done and dusted before sweltering temps and trade winds could overly impact my workout. This is in contrast to a ride last week when temps were 10°C warmer and my heart rate was upwards of 30 beats per minute higher. Both environments are useful, but it’s important that the body and mind are prepared for the differing stressors—that workouts and recovery are coordinated to allow for healthy development. The goal of all training is to provide the body with adaptation stimuli. The goal is *not* to try and force change: the body doesn’t like being forced and instead responds by breaking.
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The associated graph shows how my pulse rose and fell with recorded temperatures while maintaining a consistent power output. Stay aware of what is happening in your body, adjust your effort accordingly, and take into account the roll that environmental factors play in your training.
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Finally, if you’re going to allow competitive energy into your training, use it to be more consistent with your workouts than friends, teammates, or competitors rather than trying to train harder than them. In other words, train smarter. Play the long game. ...

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∙ There's no secret sauce to be found in complexity.
∙ The same pattern exists in mediation.
∙ Just stay consistent. Boring gets exciting!
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✌️ ∙ 🌱 ∙ 🙏
#peace #plants #namaste

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* Capacity & Power *
https://soulfulsojourn.com/capacity-power/
(1/2)
“Most triathletes are doing too much [high-intensity work]. You don’t need more than 1 HIT session per week.”
~Jan Olbrecht PhD
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“Many recreational athletes are scared [that they’re] not training hard enough. What they need to be thinking about is training easy enough, and long enough in the low-intensity sessions to build biological durability so that the high-intensity sessions really can be developmental.”
~Dr. Stephen Seiler
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These two leading sport scientists are very clear that most people place too much emphasis on high-intensity training (HIT). Let's take a look at the reasoning.
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The physiological engine has two key aspects: capacity and power. Simply put, capacity is the size of one's engine, i.e. the number & volume of the cylinders in an engine. Power is the degree to which that engine can be utilised.
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The durability that Dr Seiler mentions refers to how robust an athlete's hormonal, musculoskeletal, and cardiovascular systems are and the extent to which they can respond to and recover from training. Thus, engine capacity is a combination of size (how much horsepower it has) and its resiliency to the demands asked of it.
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Building capacities *before* building power is important because power work can break the engine (i.e. injury and overtraining) if it’s not prepared for it. And the best way to *optimise* capacity is through a lot of volume at low intensity mixed with a few short intensive bouts at high speed. The reason is that we want to provide a stimulus to all the mitochondria—the energy-producing organelles in the body. 80-90% of the mitochondria are active at low intensity. The rest are recruited by short, high-intensity efforts. ...

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• Endurance Training •
https://soulfulsojourn.com/endurance-training/
(1/5)
❝What is very clear is that the best athletes in endurance sport spend ~90% of the time below the first lactate turn-point❞ ~Stephen Seiler, PhD & Dean, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences and Nutrition, Universitetet i Agder, Kristiansand, Norway
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Building fitness takes work. A very important part of it is knowing how hard, how much, how often, and why. The last one—why—affects everything else. The reason for doing something changes so it’s important to continually revisit the question. It can empower you to healthy excellence or lead to disease. It can build you up or provoke injury. The first three questions above can be much easier to illuminate. Let’s take a look into the training characteristics of the most successful female cross-country skier ever during the best period of her career—a highly impressive five-year timespan.
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This study, performed in 2017 by Solli, Tønnessen, & Sandbakk, reveals a polarised training model that leading sport scientists and exercise physiologists have shown is optimal for performance, health, and longevity. Full text is available here, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2017.01069/full.
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There are three types of training:
• Endurance
• Strength
• Speed
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There are three intensity levels:
• Low-intensity training (LIT)
• Moderate (MIT)
• High (HIT)
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During the five consecutive successful years, training time was distributed as:
• 90.6% endurance
• 8.0% strength
• 1.4% speed-training
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Looking deeper at the endurance training, time spent at the three intensity levels consisted of:
• 92.3 ± 0.3% LIT
• 2.9 ± 0.5% MIT
• 4.8 ± 0.5% HIT
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Notice the very strong emphasis on endurance training (90.6%) and that most of it (92.3%) is done at low intensity! ...

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∙ Prep & Base Phases ∙
https://soulfulsojourn.com/prep-base
(1/3)
In my previous post, Off-Season, I quickly summarised the most important phase of the year, off-season, for recovery of the mind and body. In this post, I’ll outline the next two phases. The point of sharing this information is to help facilitate the process of learning, and to help athletes avoid some of the pitfalls or at least lessen their time in them.
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The two meso-phases after Off-season are Preparation and Base training. The underlying foci in both are the accumulation of training volume, building strength and improvement in technique (form). The base phase consists of three micro-phases, each with small increases in intensity *as part of* training volume accumulation. This is dramatically different from the next two meso-phases—the Build and Peak phases—later in the season where intensity increases *as a percentage of* total volume by replacing some of the lower-intensity endurance training. In other words, during the Base phase, we slowly add higher intensity training over several months as part of the increase in the total training volume, in contrast to the Build phase when the higher intensity comes at the cost of endurance training volume.
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It can’t be understated that increases in intensity can only happen once the athlete’s fitness and strength have been developed. One of my favourite quotes is ”Get fit enough to train.” Steady, consistent endurance work builds up the athlete. Intensive work tears down the tissues of the body, and, in the case of extremely high efforts, erodes the mental battery. Through endurance training, the athlete’s aerobic capacity is improved, which in turn allows optimal use of higher intensity training because with higher fitness comes faster recovery. ...

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✹ Separation ✹
https://soulfulsojourn.com/separation/
“Silence is a great source of strength.” ~Lao Tzu
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I recently changed locale: a cabin in the woods near a lake for a large metropolis.
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Walking through town I am surrounded by concrete, noise, exhaust, overpowering perfumes, fragrance additives, tobacco smoke, lots of people, chaotic energy, media stimulation vying for (my) attention, etc. Historically, anxiety and unrest would have quickly taken hold. Thankfully, the solitude and quietness developed while living simply in nature have woven themselves into my fibres. Peaceful awareness is the primary experience in this visit.
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Although I’m physically separated from my beloved forest environment, she resonates deeply within.
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I invite you to regularly create room for fostering silence in your life.
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✌️ ∙ 🌱 ∙ 🙏
#peace #plants #namaste

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Makeshift standing desk. 🖥
Fresh air office. 😎
Birds as co-workers. 🕊

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Off-Season
https://soulfulsojourn.com/off-season/
• • •
It took me many years to learn the importance of downtime. This year, I finally headed advice from @alan_couzens and took an entire month of complete rest.
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Alan, Mike James (@the_endurance_physio), and many others know the importance of enjoying another 4-6 weeks, after the complete rest period, for really light, even unplanned exercise. This is sometimes known as the Transition phase.
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Between time off and 'soft' month that's 8 weeks of no training!!
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It's been an incredible experience for me these last 7 weeks to watch the progression in my mind and body as structures heal, the mind recharges, and hunger grows. I've had time to improve in other areas of my life that I've wanted to tackle; things that have been bugging me for decades.
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Six-time Ironman Triathlon World Champion, Mark Allen, also promotes a full break from training to ensure that the athlete can get the most out of their training and racing.
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After those initial 8 weeks, the athlete then moves into low structure, low volume, low-intensity work. This is often called the Preparation phase and can last for a month or two.
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Once the prep is done, then, and only then, should the first Base phase begin, which usually lasts between 4-12 weeks depending on current fitness, years of consistent & healthy training, and race season goals.
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As a coach, I have often have to balance what I know to be the best for the athlete (based on my own experience & knowledge, and the years of experience and knowledge from trusted experts in exercise physiology, bio-energetics, physiotherapy, and research science in the areas of sleep, nutrition, etc.) and what the athlete feels.
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The point is that Stress has to have Rest in order for there to be Growth. This principle applies daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.
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✌️ ∙ 🌱 ∙ 🙏
#peace #plants #namaste

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🌿 Free, or One 🌿
https://soulfulsojourn.com/free/
˙
I long to be set free.
To or from, place or thing?
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This fragmented state,
Some odd mentation.
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The mind paints escape,
In time and space.
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But no locus exists,
Only I am.
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I want to know again,
This One we are.
~
Caressed by expanse.
No limits delude.
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Self touches universe.
Her breath envelopes.
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We are the same and are either one.
˙
˙
OM
✌️ ∙ 🌱 ∙ 🙏

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I reflect often on that life changing week @ultramancanada, not the least being that "grueling" day 3 when we finished 2nd place overall for the three day race (behind a pro 20 years my younger). I'm forever grateful for and indebted to @alex.banville & @dfberman for their work, support, service, guidance and friendship. Mahalo, thank you, merci beaucoup. 🙏
・・・
#Repost @alex.banville
・
Throwback to the grueling 84km run of the Ultraman Canada Day 3. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about this; the amazing opportunity I had to crew a good friend through the final stretch of his Journey 🤙
•
"Acknowledge you're tired, then move your thoughts process away from that" - Jim Vance
•
#tbt #ultramancanada #endurance #runshots #running #triathlete #triathlon #bringithome #fitfam #summer #journey #passion #anythingispossible

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My bathtub is getting a bit cold these days. But the setting still can't be beat.
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✌️ ∙ 🌱 ∙ 🙏
#peace #plants #namaste

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* Mystery *
https://soulfulsojourn.com/mystery/
(1/2)
“The mystery of life. 🙏”
~Hella (my best friend)
.
I feel like a dog who twists & turns his head trying to understand a sound, or what someone is saying, as I try and fathom death and that dad isn’t on this earth now. Although he wasn’t the father I wanted him to be, or that I envisioned having, he was still my dad, and I mourn the loss of the dad energy I’ve held in my heart.
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I’m also struck by the futility of fighting against death. It’s a losing battle. It seems far smarter to utilise that energy for something constructive, i.e. to observe what is in the current moment.
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Johnathon Foust invites us to notice the play of vedanā (feeling & sensation) in the body, notice one’s relationship to it. As I relax and pay attention, and keep relaxing and paying attention, I become aware of more of what’s going on, my body starts to unwind—tensions start to untwine. It doesn’t mean that everything is suddenly rosy. But it is part of being an active participant in life, rather than a delusional combatant.
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When I feel into “what is”, and accept it as what exists right now, there is peace. When I roll in “what isn’t” I suffer. ...

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