Adam Detillieux

Getting outdoors is one tremendous way to improve mood instantly, and around here, we’re not interested in letting things like “cold weather” get us down from improving our mood and fitness level. The ultimate way to tackle this challenge is through proper gear. I’m going to highlight in this episode, how to tackle cold water swimming using the right gear.

So here is all my cold water swimming gear, shown in the picture above. Now there is many people who congregate at the beach by the river, but I am the only one who gets to enjoy the benefits of front crawl swimming! The water is too cold without a little help from our old trusty friend, clothing!

Now, the full body wetsuit is the most important thing if you want to start doing some river or lake swimming. That one piece of gear will get you at least neck deep into some pretty chilly territories. The wetsuit will also provide buoyancy in the water, so I can lay on my back without even paddling and not sink down too far. This provides some much needed rest and will bring you downstream a bit.

The second most important step is the goggles and the swimming cap. The wetsuit is great for doggy paddling, treading water etc. But if you want to immerse your head fully to complete the breast stroke, front crawl you will need some head protection. In Saskatchewan the fresh water reserves are still chilly in June and the cold water rushing over your ears and head will quickly make you think better of immersing your head for too long. However, getting a thermal, ear covering swim cap makes all the difference. Add some earplugs if your ears sensitive to the cold, and you should already have some goggles kicking around, and if you don’t GO BUY GOGGLES RIGHT NOW, that is a critical step for becoming superhuman!

Now, the thermal gloves and socks I would consider the least important of the equipment I’ve listed, but they still make extended swimming sessions much more enjoyable. One of the side benefits of having gloves is that they cover up the arm openings of the wetsuit, so when I am doing the front crawl,  no water gets into the arms of the wetsuit. The socks keep your feet warm and also provide a nice buffer incase there is rocks or twigs that step on.

So if you are interested in giving cold water swimming a try, I would recommend ALL the gear listed below, but if you want to start small, then purchase the items listed in the order below.

1. Wetsuit, full body is best, but if you already have  a half length wetsuit, give that a try first.
2. Goggles
3. Thermal swim cap that covers the ears, optional earplugs
4. Thermal swim gloves
5. Thermal swim socks

I much prefer fresh water swimming compared to swimming in a chlorine filled pool, which dries out my skin terribly. Plus, its ALWAYS open, rather than the limited lane swim times of the local pool. However, the best thing about fresh water swimming is that it’s FREE and will build up your finances and strength, which is what we aim for around here!

If the weather is beautiful, get out and swim! Actually, the weather doesn’t matter, you just need the right gear!

Adam

I’m reading through a book right now called Bold by Peter Diamondis and Steven Kotler. The book is fantastic and touches base on some emerging technology fields and how to be an innovator. Now I am a huge fan of biking and as I was reading this book I made an interesting connection between improved thinking and riding bikes. Biking places, rather than driving, has improved my life so substantially that it’s interesting to learn theories that explain this better.

One of the concept’s of reaching an innovators mindset is getting into the “flow” state, where decisions are made fast and results happen quickly. One of the key components of reaching a flow state is having a rich environment. This is defined by having novelty, unpredictability, and complexity. Therefore, these are some of things that we should strive for in our lifestyle design if we would like to achieve more time in our “flow” states.

Now, I’m going to argue that these three components of a rich environment are not being met by most people on the 8-5 schedule in their chosen mode of transportation. The far most common method of getting to work is by entering a climate controlled garage, getting into a climate controlled car, listening to the same songs as most days and be stuck in traffic for way longer than you want to. This is obviously not providing much in terms of novelty, unpredictability, or complexity. On the contrary, it’s so boring that most people are on auto-pilot the whole time. When I used to drive my car to work, I would get home from a work day and be so tired that I needed a nap. Obviously this environment is not providing much richness, so what else can we look at?

Biking, or any other means of active transportation, is a great way to shake this up and improve the richness of the environment. The unpredictability and complexity is high due to the ever-changing weather. This ups the challenge substantially when each day requires clothes that are different from the last.  What am I going to wear today? can be a surprisingly challenging question in the coldest days of a Saskatchewan winter. Solving little, unpredictable challenges like this sets the day off in a great way and helps to get into the “Flow” state.

Since I’ve started biking to work every day, the results in my life have been overwhelmingly positive. When I get to work, I am so much more alert than I used to be and am actually ready to sit down for a while since I just finished a workout. After a long day at work, the bike ride home provides physical fitness, decision making, and a rich environment to foster a “getting things done” attitude.  I can’t recommend biking enough, change your gears, change your life!

Adam

The Eclipse Chorus had our performance at the Broadway Theatre. My girlfriend, Chelsea O’Leary and myself did a duet of “Somebody to Love”, you can see a recording made by Cam Zoller from Crackers Restaurant below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_23beCRrws

A book called “The Dorito Effect” has a chapter on nutritional intelligence. The premise of the chapter is that animals are remarkably intelligent in deciding what foods to eat. The foods that they chose to eat generally delivered exactly the nutrients that they were currently deficient of in their diet. Their ingenuity is so incredible that sick animals develop a pallet for foods that will help them recover, even if that food would normally not be tasty to the animal. So it seems that our intuition can be trusted in terms of what kinds of foods that we should be eating, I always try to ask myself “what am I craving” and then usually make it from scratch so that I know what’s going into my food.

We can also extend this theory into other areas of our lives. Are we using our intuition to guide how we spend our time? The way our body and minds feel will give remarkable clarity on what should be done next, but too often, that voice is neglected due to societal pressures put on us. One I see often, is “I can’t leave my office during non break times”, which is a huge burden to bear. Listening to your body when it is telling you it needs something is important. First, we must break down the barriers that are constantly telling us that other people are judging our behaviour. Most people are too wrapped up in their own world to bother thinking about what you’re doing, so constantly ask yourself “What do I want to experience right now? What is my body and mind telling me?” And that will act as a good source for the most valuable way you can spend your time.

Sometimes it is hard to tell what your body really needs. Your body is a black box where it is given inputs (food, activity, books, social time, etc) and the output of this black box is the way our body and mind feels. When we experience an undesirable output, such as an injured body, or a bad mood, we often have enough experience to know what inputs we can give to our body to start feeling good again. For example:  when you are feeling fatigued, the logical change in your behaviour is to rest and do less. However, many times people will try to push themselves harder because they see their work output going down. As you can guess, this ends up in a vicious cycle.

One area for me that can still be a problem point is a tight left calve that I have had for almost a decade. The tight calf was getting so bad that it was bugging me 24/7 and often prevented me from sleeping. I tried many things, lots of stretching, calf specific work outs etc, but nothing seemed to work. This is a good example of an undesirable output where I couldn’t find the right input to change. The right approach to solve a problem like this is through experimentation. The problem still eludes me from time to time, but the one thing that seems to work wonders is biking places, rather than driving. This combined with more rest time has mostly eliminated this problem that has really been tough for me to solve. Just last week was really cold (-40 C with wind chill), so I started driving to work again. Sure enough the tight calve returned and I wondered what I was doing wrong? As soon as I started biking again to work, when I got to work, the pain was gone. Amazing.

The last example is a good one that showcases how a lack of experiences and in my case, an unbalanced lifestyle (too much computer time, not enough exercise) was causing an undesirable outcome. I needed to fully implement biking into my life to figure out that it helps solve the problem for me. So what I would recommend for you is to start experimenting with new things specifically selected to solve your life’s toughest problems. Pick something, but don’t just try it once, dive in fully to see how it changes your life. The great part about this, is that you only need to explore the areas that you are interested in. A good friend gave me some sage advice when I was considering moving out of my parents house, he said “If you keep thinking about something, it’s a sign you NEED to do it.” So if you have an idea that keeps popping up, then make it a point to try it for 30 days so that you know the results that you get from it. Now, then next time your body is sending you a message that there is something undesirable happening, you may understand more, what inputs you can change to get the desired outcome.