1.Today I want to talk about why you're always tired

Today I want to talk about why you're always tired. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long-chevages? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch, and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. I was riding into the city the other day. I'm living outside the city in Clontarf. It's maybe 20 minutes, 25 minute ride into the city, and I'm riding in, and a bus past me. And the graphic on the side of the bus was on a paraphrase, and it was something about like the remedy for your constant tiredness. And there's actually like a bottle of some sort of shit that you take, some mixture of vitamins and caffeine, I can only imagine that will alleviate your tiredness. And then have you heard this idea of reticular activation system that we got bombarded with these thousands of messages each day and a reticular activation system is like a filter for a wellness to notice what's important. But since I've seen that ads, I've just started to maybe tune into the frequency of other people complaining about being tired. And the more I tune my year into this, the more people I'm here and complaining every day about constant tiredness that regardless of getting a full day is sleep. They're tired. So that's what I want to talk about today and how we can alleviate those symptoms of constant tiredness because I don't know how to fuck your getting anything done if everyone's tired all the time. Before I dive into that, let me remind you before you doze off to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore waltz because if you doze off my financial future. It's down to the tube. Over on Patreon, you can buy me the price of a beer once a month to say thanks for the podcast to keep all this positive shit we have going forward, to keep the show on the road, to keep the momentum, to keep the laughs, to keep the giggles, to keep the community building, all of that costs the price of a beer once a month. If you haven't done it yet, please head on over. Even if you're not techy, it takes about one minute less to fill it out once and then set it and forget it. It's the price of a beer once a month going forward until I start knowing you with this podcast and you can cancel at any time. Link is down below with patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore waltz. So the lack of energy and this constant fillet tiredness. This is something I expect to hear from people in their 70s. You know, people that have put in 45, 50 years hard grind on the building site and they're enjoying their old age and dignity and honour and they're just chilling out around the house and they're like, yeah, you know, I'm kind of tired all day. That's where I'm where my slippers. It's not something I expect to hear from people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. Where is the youthful exuberance gone? And when I started searching and looking at it, the answer, and it's not glamorous and almost if I was listening to a podcast that gave this answer, I would turn off at this point because the solution, it's the boring shit that we're all over, looking and we're dismissing it in search for a complex answer, a complex pill or a fucking solution on the side of a bus, the solution to our constant fatigue and tiredness, its sleep, its diet and its training. And I'm going to dive into each of those and the aspects of those that I see as important and this isn't an exhaustive deep dive, explorers of talk on sleep, training and diet, but just rather an overarching strategy rather than the tactics. things like sleep, diet, training. They're not a checklist. They're not binary. We can't just go, yes, sleep. Yeah, done that. Slip eight errors. Training, yeah, broke a sweat today. Diet, yeah, my diet's go tick, tick, tick. That's going to alleviate my tiredness. You need to think about these things like a continuum, like a needle. And you need to be always looking to move the needle on sleep, on diet, on training. And I'll give you an example of how I'm doing at the moment and this is just to spark that inquisitive nature in yourself to go, oh, how can I move the diet on sleep training, diet, sleep training and diet?

2.Because that, the combination of these three things, it's the…

Because that, the combination of these three things, it's the intersection of them is why you're feeling fatigued all the time. There is no fourth variable here. So caffeine is at substance that as cyclists we're trying to love and speak in romantic glowing terms it is cool rocket coffee machines and the magic of the barista and the coffee house and the interwoven nature coffee spins into cycling culture and coffee is lovely and I love coffee as much as the next man this brown magical liquid but think about caffeine the active ingredient in coffee It has a half life, and this is only something I'm coming to know recently. Caffeine has a half life of 5-7 hours. I never understood what half life meant. I just assumed that meant like your hangtime, like after 5-7 hours, it's gone out of my system. I never dug into half life, that's an odd expression. It means that it's half as potent 5-7 hours from now. So if I have 500mg of coffee and sort of like a double espresso, like 5-7 hours from I still have 250 milligrams in my system. 5 to 7 hours from them, I still have 125 milligrams in my system. So to rewind this and go, if I have a coffee as 4 p.m. I still have, or if I have my regular double espresso, I'm still going to have like 250 milligrams of my system at 11 p.m. when I'm trying to go asleep. And I'm still going to have 125 milligrams in my system at 5 a.m. when I'm fast asleep. Caffeine interacts with your system in a bunch of different ways that are not good for sleep, from the way it interacts with your hormones, the time it takes you to go to sleep, quality of your sleep, it's not good to have that much caffeine hanging around your system. So how do we find the compromise between drinking coffee and enjoying it for its focus, its all its benefits, its delaying time to fatigue. How do we find that mix? mix and that's something I'm playing with at the moment. I'm starting to play with a 12 p.m. Cut off on caffeine. So if I have it at 12 p.m. I'm gonna try and not have it after that because the half life then it's reducing as the day goes on. But yeah, I'm not sure if you knew that if I'm just a little bit retarded that half life it seems in retrospect that it's obvious that it means that but I never actually broke it down to think about okay how much caffeine am I drinking at 12 p.m. versus now how much of that have I still got left in my system at 11 12 a.m. when I'm going to sleep? The answer is too much. So that's what I'm starting to move the needle on. So by just going and looking at these variables like diet, sleep, training as a checklist, I would have checked it off and going, oh my diet's good. I'm eating like a load of vegetables. I'm eating hydrate and well. I'm eating good quality sources of protein, organic food, when possible, fresh fish, fish, fish, fish. My diet's good. And then you start exploring and digging a little deeper and you go, okay, well, let's see if we can move the needle a little bit on caffeine. And that's what you need to be doing to battle this constant fatigue. It's not the poxied out on the soil of the bush. That's not going to get you there. Another example of sort of moving the needle is on sleep. You know, I've referenced so many times the amazing book from Matt Walker titled Why We Sleep. And in that book he brilliantly advocates for eight hours sleep a night and I had a habit of getting into bed for a long time and saying okay it's 11.30, set my alarm for eight hours from now and that's eight hours sleep but when you unpack that and you break it down it's actually not because how long did it take me to get a sleep maybe forty-five minutes how many times did I get up to go to the bathroom during the night because I've put a super massive focus on hydration maybe I've got up twice to go to the bathroom during the night and it's taking me 15 minutes to get back into a deep sleep each time. Like all of a sudden they've gone from 8 hours sleep to under 7 hours sleep.

3.That's not good because the research in that book shows the health…

Like that's not good because the research in that book shows the health differences between sleep and 7 hours and sleep in 8 hours. And I've been going around preaching that I'm sleeping 8 hours when I'm fact I'm only sleeping 7. So again I'm trying to move the needle on that. Something else that I've noticed is open loops. But that means that you're watching TV show or 24 or Jack Bauer and you're like I'm only gonna watch one episode At the end of the episode There's a cliffhanger in script writing they call that an open loop and the idea what an open loop is it leaves this unanswered question in our mind And there's a part of our mind that needs that question answered and that's what pulls you to the next episode We need that loop closed. So it's the cliffhanger the car's going over the cliff boom episode ends you're like shit I need to see what happens did the main character die when that car went over the cliff I'm gonna watch the first five minutes of the next episode to see then it closes the loop but now you're into the next episode they use that super well in storytelling and script writing this idea of open loops but a lot of us open loops gone to bed and when you open a loop whether it's an email or to text message or it's any unresolved conversation you're having with a friend or a spouse you leave that all night where you're wondering, how is that going to resolve itself? Even if it's something trivial, so don't go to bed with open loops. Some of the other stuff I've talked about, you know, nearly a nozzie at this point, blue light blockers are super effective and you can go back on a specific podcast episodes on the hormonal effect of using blue light blockers versus not using them, the effect it has on deep sleep, time into sleep, the same with evening routines, but something that I've added recently is a mask and earplugs and that's really, really helping one more sleep as well. Also played around with the idea of mouth taping and that's off the back of James Nestor's book, Braid and again have a podcast back on that if you search back on that on mouth breathing and especially the conversation I had with Claire Walsh who's the deep sea diver who can do these seven and a half minute breath holes. That's super illustrative and illuminating as to why we need to really focus on nose breathing as opposed to mouth breathing when we're sleeping. The goal of this short form podcast, it was to get you to think about tiredness, fatigue. These are problems that a lot of us are experiencing, a lot of us are self-identifying as this is a problem in my life. If that's you, there's not a solution out there, that's a tablet, there's not a pill solution out there. The solution, it's hiding in plain and so it almost because it's so obvious that you're overlooking it and it's back to the basics of sleep, diet, training. Let's optimize all these and let's start moving the needle all the time. I'll leave you on this. We're not looking for perfection in any of these, but what we are looking for is progress. Can you be better today than you were yesterday? Can you be better this week than you were last week? Row men, I'm going to leave you with that. I'm going to chat to you again tomorrow. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Again, really quick, I want to invite you to join, arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14 day kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner, advanced. to me uplands shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmancycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.