0:00

There's just general, like, what am

0:02

I doing today? It's like breaking

0:04

any part of your routine, it

0:06

just feels off. And then, like

0:08

physically, I don't feel any better.

0:10

Like I come off the rest day feeling

0:12

like rusty and sluggish. Yeah, and I'm like,

0:14

well, if I just hadn't had the rest

0:17

day, I would have, I would perform better.

0:19

And I guess I just, I learned that

0:21

about myself back when I was a runner

0:23

and a rock climber, because with rock

0:26

climbing, I would, I never took rest

0:28

days. and the reason like in the

0:30

first year that I started climbing I

0:32

climbed every day for a year didn't

0:34

take a single day off which is

0:36

absurd I was just so obsessed and

0:38

then Randomly I was like,

0:40

oh, let's try a rest day.

0:42

Let's try that. And I took

0:45

a rest day and then the

0:47

next day I got dumps, which

0:49

is like delayed onset muscular fatigue,

0:52

right? Like all the fatigue that

0:54

had been building up inside my

0:56

body suddenly was like released and

0:59

my my forearms took the brunt

1:01

of it because suddenly the body

1:03

was like, okay, we need to

1:05

repair. I couldn't grab it. anything.

1:08

And they were like that for a week and

1:10

a half. Couldn't do any. So I was

1:12

like forced to not climb. The rest day

1:14

forced me then to take more time

1:17

off until that muscular fatigue or

1:19

that soreness went away. And then

1:21

I went back to climbing. And

1:23

what was interesting is like once I

1:25

went back to climbing, I could climb

1:27

like indefinitely. There was no problem. There

1:29

was soreness, but there wasn't that like

1:31

just brutal wipe me out for a

1:34

week soreness. And so then I just

1:36

got into this routine where I'd always

1:38

climb a little bit every day and like

1:40

just keep the muscles moving and I'd never

1:42

get that like just complete obliterated obliterated soreness.

1:45

And every now and then I would

1:47

take a day off and the same

1:49

thing would happen. Same thing. It was

1:51

like clockwork. I would just get destroyed with

1:53

soreness. And I was like, well, what's

1:55

the point of this? Like, because I

1:57

wasn't coming back better. I wasn't coming

1:59

back stronger. performing poorly before that, you

2:01

know, it was more of like a mental

2:03

thing where like, oh, I just need a

2:06

mental break today. I don't really feel like

2:08

going out to the crack. I don't feel

2:10

like going to the cliffs, but it wasn't

2:12

a physical thing so much. And yeah, I

2:14

just hated it. I was like, I'm not

2:17

gonna take rest days anymore. So I just

2:19

kind of baked that into my ethos and

2:21

same thing with lifting. I just found that

2:23

like, like, just lift something else that day.

2:26

Just do something. Yeah, do something else. There's

2:28

no reason to take a full 24-hour rest

2:30

day. It's like, that's such an arbitrary amount

2:32

of time anyhow. It's like, who came up

2:34

with that? Where our ancestors, you know, on

2:37

the Savannah, who are like, the Apex athletes,

2:39

like, did they take a day off? Where

2:41

they're just like, today we're not gonna hunt,

2:43

we're not gonna gather, I'm just gonna sit

2:45

around, like, maybe, like, like, maybe, like, like,

2:48

like, like, like, like, to rest. I think

2:50

so and what's interesting I actually want to

2:52

dive into this which is that you said

2:54

you didn't get stronger from those rest days

2:56

because I would imagine typically at least you

2:59

know what most people think is when you

3:01

get a rest day so they can come

3:03

back stronger but you did it for a

3:05

year yeah and then you didn't come back

3:08

stronger whereas I would imagine the compounding effect

3:10

of having a rest day after a year

3:12

would massively increase. I actually think it would

3:14

massively, well there's two different ways you could

3:16

look at this, is taking one rest day

3:19

every week is that rest period and recovery,

3:21

is that better so that you can train

3:23

harder on the other days? Because that's the

3:25

idea of a rest day. The rest day

3:27

isn't really so much about letting the muscles

3:30

rebuild and recoup, that's maybe part of it,

3:32

but the other part of it is just

3:34

so that you can have a better workout

3:36

the next workout, right? And that's why like

3:38

you don't do speed work. If you're a

3:41

track athlete, you don't do speedwork every day.

3:43

You do it once on Monday, maybe later

3:45

in the week, probably just once a week,

3:47

right? You do that so you can increase

3:50

the quality of the effort. But the way

3:52

I look at it was if I took

3:54

a day off every week, then by the.

3:56

of the year I had taken off, you

3:58

know, 50 days. If I had done workouts

4:01

on those days, something, not necessarily, you know,

4:03

a speed workout, but some kind of workout,

4:05

would I be 50, would I be 50

4:07

sessions better? Like who is going to be

4:09

the better at the one who had 50

4:12

more sessions or the person who took the

4:14

rest days? And that's a really hard question,

4:16

but I think generally when you look at

4:18

the guys and gals who are that. absolute

4:20

best at their sports, like the legends, the

4:23

Kobe Bryant's, Michael Jordan's, the LeBron James. They're

4:25

not the ones that were taking a rest

4:27

day every day or every week, right? Like

4:29

they were like every day I'm in and

4:32

I'm working, I'm doing something. And so I

4:34

just, but the other side of that is

4:36

like you don't go 100% every day. When

4:38

you take the mindset that you are going

4:40

to work out every day, you have to

4:43

bake in your own recovery cycle. into that.

4:45

So you're like, okay, Monday, you end up,

4:47

that's part of knowing your body and listening

4:49

to it and being like, okay, today, today,

4:51

I was going to go 100% but I'm

4:54

actually just going to go 85% because I

4:56

have this thing over here, it's not feeling

4:58

great, like just not going to push that

5:00

super hard, I'll go hard tomorrow, right? Or,

5:02

oh, I was going to do that leg

5:05

workout today, but honestly, those legs, like, I

5:07

would get a better workout that way. Right,

5:09

but you have to you have to understand

5:11

like your your rhythms and that's actually kind

5:14

of a hard thing to do if you

5:16

haven't been like Really in tune with your

5:18

body Yeah, but as like an athlete if

5:20

you grew up with that then you start

5:22

to understand like when you can push and

5:25

when you need to pull back just slightly

5:27

in the workout I see so it's almost

5:29

like your freestyle a little bit along the

5:31

way. Yeah, and this is the same with

5:33

like entrepreneurship, right like is that we we

5:36

make our schedules And one of the great

5:38

things about being an entrepreneur is that you

5:40

get to take a day off, afternoon off,

5:42

you can take the weekend off, you can

5:45

do all that stuff, right? One of the

5:47

reasons people get into entrepreneurship is because they

5:49

don't... like working a W-2 that forces them

5:51

into this paradigm of working five days and

5:53

then having two days off and they're looking

5:56

forward to those two days off and all

5:58

the other five days are kind of a

6:00

shit show. Whereas an entrepreneur you can like

6:02

create your life and you can do the

6:04

work in a way where you're like I

6:07

don't need time off. Right I think that's

6:09

Damartel's definition of what is an empire is

6:11

like to create a create a life for

6:13

Create a life of work that you never

6:15

need to retire from or something like that

6:18

Right and that's the idea of like do

6:20

something that you love you never work a

6:22

day in your life But you also as

6:24

an entrepreneur then like when your life just

6:27

becomes about all like working all the time

6:29

and you're doing the seven days a week

6:31

Right then you have to figure out your

6:33

rhythms because you're not going to show up

6:35

every day and and be at your peak

6:38

and be at your peak and so you

6:40

have to figure out okay today or even

6:42

in this time chunk in the mornings I

6:44

can give my best in the afternoons I

6:46

cannot. And like even just understanding that paradigm,

6:49

because like really what we're talking about here,

6:51

the thing that blew your mind was reframing

6:53

this idea of a rest day and saying

6:55

like everybody says you need to take a

6:57

rest day for working out purposes. But who

7:00

decided that like that's an arbitrary period of

7:02

time? What does that actually have to do

7:04

with the science of like muscular recovery? Does

7:06

it have anything? Or did we just pick

7:09

an arbitrary? because the sun comes up and

7:11

goes down during this period, that must be

7:13

when your body is like optimally recovered, right?

7:15

In the same way, the paradigm of a

7:17

week or a month or a year is

7:20

completely arbitrary. Right? And so let's chunk that

7:22

down and realize that the chunk of a

7:24

day is arbitrary. And so the idea that

7:26

I'm gonna wake up, I'm gonna give 100%

7:28

two day, what does that even mean? Like,

7:31

can the human give 100% for a 16

7:33

hour period? Not really, not for certain types

7:35

of work, perhaps, but like, not really. So

7:37

like, when you even look at the arbitrary

7:39

nature of a day, you start to say.

7:42

Well, why am I structuring it like this?

7:44

Why am I structuring my day in an

7:46

eight-hour work chunk? Does that even make sense?

7:48

Well, it makes sense when we were factory

7:51

workers, and we had shifts, like from eight

7:53

until five, and then the next shift would

7:55

come in from five until five, right? And

7:57

then the next shift would come in from

7:59

five until two, right? And then it's from

8:02

two till eight, right? And so then you

8:04

look at it and you're like, oh, forget

8:06

working for a 15-hour a four-hour day. And

8:08

then I'm going to take four hours off.

8:10

And then I'm going to work for four

8:13

hours. And then I'm going to take the

8:15

night off. And then I'm going to wake

8:17

up the next day. I'm going to work

8:19

for four hours. And then I'm going to

8:21

take four hours. Right. You could do that.

8:24

But it comes to understanding your rhythm and

8:26

like what works best for you. And that's

8:28

why we talk about time blocking a day

8:30

where you do your creative work output. it

8:33

probably wouldn't be in that structure. You would

8:35

probably wake up and do your work, the

8:37

most important creative work first, and then you

8:39

probably take a bunch of time off. Right?

8:41

You'd probably go away for four hours and

8:44

do something else. And then you'd come back

8:46

and be like, okay, I'm not gonna put

8:48

that, now I'm gonna put the next four

8:50

hours into admin or I'm gonna do whatever,

8:52

right? But the reason we do it in

8:55

the eight hour chunk is, again, because it's

8:57

a societal expectation. from that time to that

8:59

time. So if you're going to do business,

9:01

you do them during business hours, right? Or

9:03

your loved ones are at work or at

9:06

school, so it makes sense for you to

9:08

chunk it all down here. But again, it's

9:10

like, it's all an arbitrary time frame. It's

9:12

not designed, it was never designed to say

9:15

this is the best way to structure your

9:17

life, your work. And I think taking a

9:19

step back and revaluating that, whether it's your

9:21

fitness and you're working out and you really

9:23

need a rest day. Or could I really

9:26

just actually get a workout in every day?

9:28

Or could I do two workouts in every

9:30

single day? There is a crazy... idea right

9:32

top athletes how Top athletes,

9:34

how many workouts are

9:37

they doing a day? you

9:39

So it's like, be

9:41

if you wanted to

9:43

be the best, you you

9:45

wouldn't just do one

9:48

a day. two a days

9:50

you wouldn't take rest

9:52

days. You'd be doing Bryant

9:54

You'd be doing three

9:57

right so I Kobe Bryant,

9:59

you'd be doing four really

10:01

right? So thing think

10:03

that's just a really

10:05

important thing, especially as

10:08

you're an entrepreneur, you

10:10

start to take control

10:12

of your schedule. schedule And this

10:14

is the idea that

10:16

you either own your

10:19

schedule or your schedule

10:21

owns you. And if

10:23

you don't direct your schedule with intention,

10:25

if you don't understand why you've laid

10:27

it out out way that it is is,

10:29

you just are going through the motions,

10:31

because that's how everybody else has said

10:33

we do it, then you're gonna get

10:35

a suboptimal result.