Injuries & Accidents
Make rest days great again
Welcome
Greetings from Washington, DC! Welcome to the 58 new subscribers who have joined us since last month. Y’all are in good company.
March has been quite the month. Let me tell ya…
Finished the CrossFit Open in the top 89th percentile in the world
Grew my Twitter following to ~15K followers
Earned $3,000 in side hustle income
Wrote this thread on the future of the $12B+ sleep tech industry
Went snowboarding in Stowe, VT where Rachael and I got into a car accident and nearly spun off a bridge (we are fine, but Rach’s car was totaled)
Booked a 14 day trip to Italy
Nonetheless, I have a ton of great stuff to share with you all.
TL;DR
Here’s what we got in store for this month…
#1 Fitness Mistake Holding You Back
Building a Fully Remote Local Business
Let’s dive in…
Physical Health
In this month’s episode of “Physical Health,” we are going to talk about something I have historically not done very well with…
Yes, I deadlift 555 lbs.
Yes, I have run a marathon.
Yes, I finished in the top 89th percentile in the world in the CrossFit Open.
But guess what?
I absolutely SUCK at taking rest days. I’ve definitely gotten better over time, as you might’ve read in February’s post, but I’m really just not good at it.
This historical SUCKING at taking rest days has resulted in various injuries over time: injuring my shoulder two years ago, injuring my back 3 months ago, and injuring my back AGAIN 2 weeks ago. It’s just not a fun time.
The issue is that when I take a rest day, I feel like I am falling behind; almost as if I take a day off, I might gain 200 pounds overnight and lose all the progress I have built over my eight years of lifting.
This might sound ridiculous but this is literally how my brain works.
Fortunately, there has been an increasing push from the athletics community to create awareness around rest and recovery. Also, there are many super-smart people building startups in the space: Whoop, Oura, Crescent, and many others.
I’m writing this piece not only as a mental note to “LISTEN TO MY BODY and take a damn rest day every once in a while,” but also as a means to create awareness around the importance of rest and recovery.
In this podcast, Ben Bergeron, arguably the best CrossFit coach of all time, mentions that if you don’t get a good night’s sleep, you probably should not even workout that day! This really hit home.
Here is a guy coaching some of the fittest people in the world telling others that sleep and recovery are the foundation of all health.
I believe it.
Mental Health
I want to take a second to dig into an idea from the previous section:
The issue is that when I take a rest day, I feel like I am falling behind; almost as if I take a day off, I might gain 200 pounds overnight and lose all the progress I have built over my eight years of lifting.
To an outsider, this might sound absolutely ridiculous, but to any consistent gym-goer, you feel my pain.
You wake up in the morning after leg day. Your entire body hurts. You know you should probably take a rest day, but you force yourself to go to the gym because you 1) don’t want to fall behind on your program or 2) convince yourself that one day off is going to affect your gains.
Newsflash for ya, neither of those is a good reason to not take a rest day.
There are lots of fitness influencers who preach “No days off”, but I think that’s a terrible mindset to have; especially when it comes to lifting.
I came across this Tweet from my friend Joe, and I think it perfectly encapsulates what I am trying to get at here:
One of the biggest secrets of fitness is avoiding injury.
If you're healthy, you can exercise consistently.
If you exercise consistently, compounding will do its work.
To avoid injury, tame your ego. If you don't push past 85%, you're less likely to get injured.
This is SO true! Fitness is a long-term game. Consistently going to the gym three days per week for ten years > sporadically going to the gym for 9 days in a row, getting injured, and then having to take off a month.
Joe writes one of my favorite newsletters, The Lake Street Journal.
Social Health
I haven’t been scrolling Twitter nearly as much as I used to, but I found this thread that really hit home. It’s written by this person Punk6529; named after the NFT project Crypto Punks (recently acquired by Yuga Labs, the maker of Bored Ape Yacht Club).
Punk6529 writes a lot of content about crypto, but he has also written some really great posts on life.
He wrote this one on How Short Life Is, and it totally blew me away. You can read the whole piece here, but I think this Tweet sums it up pretty well:
Prior mental framework was "my boy is in town, maybe we can grab drinks if our schedules allow, if not, no problem, next time."
New mental framework is: "tonight is one of your last 30 times you can see one of your best friends in your life"
TL;DR: As you get older, it gets harder and harder to see your best friends. When you have an opportunity to see them, take it!
Let’s say you met your best friend in high school. Y’all spend every day together; driving to school, classes, lunch, sports, weekends, summers, etc. From freshman year to senior year, you hang out 1,500 times.
Since graduating from high school, you both graduate college and get jobs. You now see each other every six months.
It is mathematically certain that about 99% of the time you will ever spend together, in the rest of your lives, you both have already done so.
That’s crazy!
So next time you have an opportunity to meet up with a friend you haven’t seen in a while, remind yourself that tonight is one of the 20, 30, or 50 times left, IN YOUR LIFE, to see this person.
It really puts things into perspective.
Vocational Health
I surprisingly did not come across much financial content this month! This is a good thing because I normally have a TON of financial stuff and not much for the other sections. Anyways, let’s see if I can dig something up…
Navigates to Twitter to check bookmarks…
Aha! Let me tell you about my new friend Neel Parekh. We connected on Twitter after I read this super interesting thread by him. Here’s the hook…
I got stranded on a desert island off of Panama for 10 days.
No food, no shelter, no cell service.
Here's the story and how the island changed my view on life:
Dude! Who wouldn’t want to read that? Long story short, I read this thread, navigated to Neel’s profile, and learned that he runs a remote cleaning business.
“Remote cleaning business…” I thought to myself. “How the heck do you do that?”
Curious about this dude who got stranded on an island off the coast of Panama AND runs a remote cleaning business, I hit him up. We hopped on Zoom and chatted about his story…
He started his career working venture capital and private equity. He did that for 4 years, and then realized it wasn’t for him. He always wanted to work for himself, so he started MaidThis.
MaidThis helps homeowners and short-term rental hosts with their cleanings. Pretty good business if you ask me… Rachael and I just booked 4 Airbnbs for our upcoming trip to Italy, and we paid more in cleaning fees than the actual rental!
Since starting MaidThis, he’s traveled to over 35 countries while building his company remotely.
I don’t know why, but I always thought a local, cleaning business would have to be managed in-person. I guess not!
Most recently, Neel launched the MaidThis Franchise to help business owners build their own fully remote, new-age business from anywhere in the world.
This might be something I have to explore in the future…
TL;DR: You can manage almost any business remotely if you build effective systems and hire great people.
Financial Health
I am on a mission to help 1,000,000 live healthier. The best way to do that is through writing; hence why I write this monthly newsletter. One aspect of living a healthy life is building wealth over time. In order to build wealth, you need to make smart investments. To make smart investments, you need to study smart investors.
There are plenty of different types of investors out there - growth investors, value investors, angel investors, venture capitalists - but the one type of investor I have found most interesting is the Solo Capitalist.
I first heard of Solo Capitalism from Shaan Puri in a tweet he wrote back in December 2021. Since then, I’ve been hearing and more about it. You’re probably wondering, well what is it?
In Nikhil Basu Trivedi’s The Rise of Solo Capitalists, he defines Solo Capitalists as the following:
They are the sole general partner (GP) of their funds.
The solo capitalist is the only member of the investment team.
The brand of the fund = the brand of the individual.
They are typically raising larger funds and writing larger checks than super angels - i.e. $50M+ funds, and able to invest $5M+ in rounds.
They are competing to lead Seed, Series A, and later stage rounds, against traditional venture capital firms.
I don’t have much else to say other than this seems really friggin cool; definitely something I would like to do in my life.
For more on Solo Capitalists, I highly recommend checking out this piece by Mario Gabriele, The Future of Solo Capitalists.
Great issue, Austin! Love the vulnerability and introspection. I'm also brutal at taking rest days. Getting into the mindset that rest days actually move you more forward in the long run is tough, but worth it. I started focusing on "active recovery" on those days which helped a lot (foam roll session with full body stretch, light cycling, going for a massage, normatec day, steam/sauna/light swim, longer meditations. Tricks the brain into thinking you're being productive, but really just recovering. Good luck on the journey!