By the end of 2019, I was physically healthy, but inside I was struggling. My eight-year relationship with my fiancé had ended, and I could feel my time as CEO of Onnit was coming to a close. I was also still unable to find resolution with my father’s mental disorders. And the deeper reasons for my suffering were still lurking in the shadows. 
I heard about darkness therapy from Aaron Alexander, which was one of many signs to take the plunge into the great unknown. He told me of a house in the black forest outside Frankfurt, Germany, near a town whose name translates to “the middle of nowhere.”

The house is owned by a family whose matriarch studied in the Hindu tradition and learned darkness therapy by staying in isolation in a cave. She is the real deal. In their house, there was a light-proofed room that you can pay to spend up to a month in. Away from your job, your friends and family, your life, and your world. And possibly the most significant aspect is the constant, ever-present pitch darkness. 

People who’ve been there say that room breaks you. But what did I have to fear? As I said, I was already pretty fucked up. So I signed up.

No sooner did I tell people about it than they were trying to talk me out of it. I’ve been on the psychedelic medicine path for over two decades, exploring many of the great indigenous traditions and initiations. But the reaction I got to the announcement that I’d simply be sitting alone in a dark room for a week was far harsher than any of the times I said I was going to a jungle in Peru for a month to do ayahuasca.

“That’s crazy!” said pretty much everyone. “You’ll go CRAZY! Aren’t you afraid of what will happen?”

To each of them, I had the same response. “Afraid of what? Being alone with my own mind?” My thinking was this: If the prospect of sitting in the dark with just your own thoughts frightens you, maybe that’s exactly where you need to be.

So, was I scared? Not really. I knew the isolation and removal of sight would test me, but if you’ve followed my work for any length of time, you know I like to test myself. I like to learn what I’m capable of, and who I am inside. And so if the learning process takes me to the brink, so be it!

Besides, the week before I went on the darkness retreat, I was with Wim Hof, testing my limits on a mountain in Poland. In the first week of 2020, I dove into a natural pool beneath a freezing waterfall, held my breath under ice for more than two minutes, and climbed four and a half hours up an icy mountain (with no shirt on).

I needed some time to be with myself. Just myself. And sitting in meditation for a week sounded like a powerful way to usher in the New Year. Little did I know how crazy the year 2020 would turn out to be. The world would shut down, and I would get together with my wife Vylana Marcus. But before all that transformation, I was entering the ultimate cocoon. 

A House In The Woods

I arrive at the house and meet Bharati, the woman who runs the retreat. She lives there with her husband and two young daughters. They are deeply steeped in the mystic traditions of India, and have a lovely little collection of artifacts from their years spent there. 

Bharati shows me to my quarters for the next week. It’s a 20’x10’ rectangular room with a cot, table and chair, couch that seats one person, dresser, yoga mat, and radiator. There’s one window that’s painted black, so I can’t see out of it, but at least I can open it for ventilation as long as I use my blackout blindfold. On the table is a single speaker that plays an “Om” chant continuously on a 15-second loop, in case I need help meditating, or just want a break from the silence. The only other voices I’ll hear (apart from the ones in my own head) will come from out the window when I open it— like birds’ songs or whispers from the wind.

If it sounds like I volunteered to do time in what convicts call The Hole, or The Box, I can assure you it isn’t that severe. First of all, a little bit of light in a jail cell is just torture. Because it’s a tease, and it prevents the psychotropic effects of the black. But beyond that, my bed includes a memory foam neck pillow, for goodness sake! There’s a 24-hour call button on the wall that I can push to alert Bharati if I need something urgently, or I lose my mind. But while the darkness retreat isn’t technically solitary confinement, it is solitary, and it is confining.

In my room is a small bathroom where I can shower and use the toilet. These will be in total darkness too. Bharati will leave food for me in a blacked out corridor outside my room, but I’ll have to find my way there and back. I’ll know it’s time to eat when they ring a bell. This will also help to give me a sense of how time is passing. If I count the meals, I can determine which is breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then I might have an idea of what time it is, or what day I’m on. 

Not that it matters.

The meals will all be raw vegan food. That’s what Bharati’s family eats, but it serves another purpose as well. I’m going to have visions, just as if I’ve been taking plant medicines. This is the darkness “dieta,” to borrow a term from the ayahuasca tradition. If I’m eating food made from animals, I’m liable to imagine how they died to make it onto my plate. That could be quite a significant thing to reconcile, so it’s best to eat things that I won’t empathize with.

The mechanism behind why visions start to occur after a few days in the darkness is still being studied. Leading theories suggest either an increase in endogenous DMT—a hallucinogenic chemical—or an increase in the chemicals that break down endogenous DMT, therefore creating a surplus in the body. For more on the leading edge science of endogenous DMT, you can check out my podcast with research professor Jon Dean.

I have three other tools at my disposal. One is a Mindfold blindfold. It blocks light while allowing you to keep your eyes open. This will allow me to open the window for some fresh air without accidentally cheating some light in. Even with your eyes closed, light will seep in through your eyelids. 

The next tool is a rudraksha necklace, which Bharati’s daughter, Ananda, hands me. The walnut-sized prayer beads are rough to the touch, but I’m grateful to put them on. They’ll be my security blanket when the lights go out, and they make a comforting rattling sound—my only entertainment apart from the sights and sounds that will soon arrive in my head.

And lastly is my tape recorder. I memorized how to turn it off and on in the dark, and it is there to capture my experience. Little did I know that these recordings would eventually turn into the most powerful film I have ever been a part of. 

Day 1

Bharati’s family gathers in my room. It’s already dark, save for a single candle that’s working for all of us. We sing Hindi songs to prepare me for my journey. Then she asks me to blow out the candle, and they’re gone. Everything’s gone.

I start to do the only thing I really can, other than sleep. I meditate. Without any distractions, it’s not difficult to go deep within myself, and quickly. I begin to hear words in my head. One of them is “obsequious”—excessively obedient or attentive. This makes me think of a waiter in a five-star restaurant who has worked his way up over a lifetime of service. The blackness around me is providing everything I need, like an obsequious waiter. It’s giving me everything I came for.

A little later, I have my first meditation vision. It’s an upside-down heart. Then I see landscapes in my mind. Finally, there’s Buddha. He’s a shining golden figure, and he’s smiling at me. I ask him why.

“Why aren’t YOU smiling?” he replies. He’s laughing now.

“Buddha, why are you laughing?”

“Why aren’t YOU laughing?”

It’s a good question, and a reminder that I haven’t been happy for a long time. I’ve been a pretty somber person as of late, not giving in to playfulness or laughter easily. Unless I’m intoxicated, on some substance or another. Which is not the way I want to live—dependent on something outside of myself for happiness. 

I take Buddha’s visit as a message to, quite simply, lighten up. And I’m starting to understand that total blackness and blinding light are really the same. In either case, you can’t see. Nothing’s all bad or all good. You need both, and you can live in both. You need to appreciate both sides of everything.

Day 2

The roosters outside my window wake me up. That’s how I know it’s morning. I have to take a shit, and when I’m done, I realize I don’t know if I’ve wiped thoroughly enough. I decide to shower after every bathroom trip to be sure. It’s an unexpected inconvenience, and the first of many.

Back in the sunlit world, I was addicted to hand sanitizer. Before putting anything near my mouth, I would wash my hands or use the alcohol. But in this darkness, even if I had sanitizer, it would be useless. I’d have used the bottle up already. I have to touch everything—the walls, the toilet, even the floor—just to get around without smashing into something. I quickly learn not to fear germs.

I also have to trust my food. I can’t see what I’m eating, so I have to believe it’s clean and well prepared and that there isn’t a bug crawling on top of it. And if I spill some on the floor, I accept that I can scrape it up and eat it or go hungry.

Brushing my teeth is another challenge. I can hardly find the bristles of my toothbrush with the hand that holds the toothpaste tube, so to avoid squeezing gobs of it everywhere else, I decide to drop it directly into my mouth and then rub it around with the brush.

These little frustrations add up, and my mind turns faster to deal with them. I’m becoming more aggressive with myself. I have verbal fights with people I care about in my head, arguing both their side and mine, but to no resolution.

At some point, I decide I need to sell everything I own. It’s holding me back. I also think everybody needs to do a public confessional. Now and then, we all need to get up in public and say, “Here’s what I’ve been hiding. This is who I am. These are the sexual thoughts I get off to…” I imagine how liberated that would make us all feel, and how we’d all be better people as a result.

Annoying as my new daily tasks are, they’re working. I’m starting to let go. I’m not going to die without hand sanitizer. I can eat food off the floor. And I can afford to brush my teeth with some procedural modifications frowned upon by the American Dental Association for a few days.

I’m learning how to just be. 

I hear my friend Mike Posner’s voice in my head. He says, “Bro, honestly, it’s not that important.”

I sleep well that night.

Day 3

I don’t wake up with the same calm I went to bed with last night.

It’s starting to get hard. I’m questioning why I’m doing this. All I have to do is look out that window, or push the call button that alerts Bharati and tell her I quit, and I can go back to my life. It’s tempting.

I try to remind myself of my why—the reason I wanted to do this in the first place. But I can’t remember it. Did I ever really know what it was?

I put my blindfold on and open the window, but I don’t look out. I just need some air… and oh fuck does it smell sweet. I take the rudraksha beads in my hands and I begin a breathing exercise. I take in deep breaths until the oxygen rush has me feeling tingles, and then I hold my breath and let out one small atmosphere of it at a time. I say “I love myself” in my head on every in-breath, and on every exhale, I try to expel anything that isn’t love.

I see I’ve been caught between serving other people—my stated purpose in life—and my own ego. I’m both self-rejecting, and selfish.

Breathe it out.

I am in a constant chase for validation, and nothing I ever do is enough for me. 

Breathe it out.

I miss my friends. I miss hearing music. I want out of this fucking room. What the fuck am I doing in here?? 

Breathe. It. Out.

I see my grandfather Aubrey. My namesake. I never actually met him in life, but here he is in front of me now. My grandmother is with him. They tell me they’re proud of me.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” I say, with tears coming down my face.

“You’re here for the darkness, son.”

And that’s when I stop resisting it.

As the ego softens, my bargaining melts away.

Mike Posner enters my head again and starts talking to me. “You make deals with yourself so you can learn to trust yourself,” he says. “When you break deals, you trust yourself less.”

Day 4

The endogenous DMT visions are really coming on strong now, and some of them are seriously fucked up. I’m seeing demons. Images so gruesome they might not be allowed in theatres if they were part of a horror movie. 

A wheat thresher is mowing people over. Heads are being crushed and limbs are spraying blood.

The more I don’t want to see it, the longer the scene lingers. My 22-year journey with plant medicine has taught me that what you resist persists. So I begin to look for beauty in the desecration and destruction. I get the word “aperspectival” stuck in my head—the absence of perspective. I remember that from the perspective of unicity, there is no good or bad. No polarity whatsoever. There is just God, who I define as “the Loving Aperspectival Witness,” or LAW. From God’s perspective, I understand that destruction is as necessary as creation, and that evil is a requisite consequence of a world of free will. 

I’m big into coming up with acronyms now. My guide to relationships is LARK—Loving, Aware, Respectful, and Kind. You have to be able to let love in and love others for exactly who they are. You need to be aware of your behavior, and your partner’s. Respect means to respect their boundaries, and your own. And, lastly, be kind.

I am able to see my habit of loving people for their potential, not for who they are in front of me. I love them when I see how great I think they could be. But making people feel that your love is conditional upon some future achievement isn’t Loving. All you’re doing is telling them they’re not enough right now.

I see Whitney, my longtime lover and ex fiancé. She’s wearing a crown of eagle feathers like a first nations moon dancer and looking over herself. She meets my gaze and asks, “Am I doing it right?” I always wanted her to reach her spiritual potential, and now I’m overcome with guilt and sadness about how I made her feel.

“Yeah, babe, you’re doing just fine.”

I understand now that the best way to support someone is just to love them. I can’t drag them up a mountain to help them climb it. I can’t make them sit in darkness. It doesn’t work that way.

My purpose now is to love people as they are. If someone asks me for help, or an analysis, or a judgment, I’ll give it and let it go. I won’t be attached to it, and I won’t try to force it.

Another acronym that comes to mind is HEB, my new guide to life. In Austin, where I live, it’s a supermarket chain. In this dark room, it means Honesty, Expectation management, and Boundaries. The importance of honesty and boundaries are obvious. But I’ve had a hard time letting go of expectations. I see how stupid that is now. Having expectations is saying I know better than what’s going to happen, and if what I expect to happen doesn’t, it’s wrong. What an ego!

Saying that anything “should be” is hubris. There is only what is. And you deal or dance with it.

With these revelations, I achieve some peace. The greatest calm I’ve felt since I got here. I see more demons, but now they’re throwing confetti in the street. Seriously. Probably some deeper meaning there, but not worth exploring for now.

In the most profound vision of the entire journey, I see my father. He’s in a corner reading a book. Back home in Austin, he’s mentally ill. He hears voices that give him delusions of grandeur.  

I ask him what book he’s reading.

“The Book of Lies,” he says. “It tells me things I want to hear.”

“Why are you reading that book, Dad?”

“Because I never loved myself.”

He throws the book over his shoulder and continues speaking to me.

“Remember that you’re worthy of love. You don’t have to be a king or a messiah to be loved.”

Wow. I take a moment to see him, and I understand his plight with deep compassion.

“Thanks, Dad. I want you to know that everything you did was perfect, because look at where I am now. I love you.”

After that vision integrates, I feel like I’m ready to leave the darkness. I got what I came for. 

I find the call button and ring for Bharati. I can’t see her when she comes in, but I hear her gently speaking to me. “The mind is tricky,” she says. She asks me to think about it another day and be sure I’ve had enough before I come out. There might still be a clue or two more to find in the dark. And I already committed to two more days. I agree to stay.

Day 5

I see my mom. She tells me she always loved me, and I confront the fact that, in spite of her efforts, I never fully let that love come in.

Why? Because if you let yourself feel loved, you’ll get attached to it. You have to say goodbye to everyone at some point, so in order to avoid the pain of losing them, we hold back the love we feel with them. It’s easier that way.

To be afraid to die is to be afraid to live.

You need to have the courage to love things in spite of the risk of losing them. You WILL lose them. Eventually. We love them BECAUSE they can be taken away. Whether it’s people, a rose, or a sunny day, they won’t last. To not enjoy them protects us from missing them as much when they’re gone, but it also denies us the pleasure of having them in the first place.

I didn’t love Whitney as much as I could because I was afraid she would choose someone else. And sometimes she did. But she always loved me; that never wavered. 

I sob for probably 20 minutes. Catharsis.

I’ve spent so much of my life not really letting love in or putting the maximum amount of love out. Not anymore. I’m terrified of going through another day of life not loving it as it is. Not loving people as they are.

Then another horrifying thought enters my consciousness. What if someone I love dies while I’m in the dark? I’m not home. I will have never gotten the chance to really love them like I know I am capable now.

In my new film, Awake In the Darkness, these moments recorded live on my tape recorder and animated for the screen are absolutely devastating for me to watch. 

I think back to when I was in high school, living with my mom and sisters in a cramped cabin in Dripping Springs, Texas. We didn’t have much—not even a TV—so we’d sit around the living room, playing music and singing along to the words.

Our family was never happier.

Right now, I don’t miss my house, or my ranch, my companies, or my possessions. I miss the people I’ve shared those things with. Human beings crave intimacy, not items.

The darkness has broken me, as I was warned it would. It’s made me see that I love life. My life, yes, and also Life with a capital L.

I’m ready to leave this room and re-enter the world.

I reach out to Bharati again, and we agree that at sunset tomorrow, I’ll take my blindfold off.

Day 6

Bharati opens the door, and I remove the blindfold. Even with my eyes closed it’s like someone is shining a flashlight in my eyes, and it’s several minutes before I can fully open them. When I do, a feeling of grief and gratitude like I have never experienced overwhelms me. 

I see the soft rolling hills of the German countryside. I see the forest. The small homes speckling the scene. It’s the most painful and beautiful thing I’ve seen in so long. Until then, I’ve forgotten how incredible my life truly is. This is one of the most powerful moments in my life, and I feel blessed that it is all captured on film. So I’ll remember. So I’ll never forget.

Let There Be Light

Darkness is the most powerful form of therapy I’ve ever experienced. It took me deeper into myself than any type of meditation or even plant medicine I’ve tried. Your trip comes not from taking something but by REMOVING everything. You don’t need drugs when you ARE drugs.

The first thing I did when I got out was listen to music. I didn’t want to look at my phone. I just sat with it on the table in front of me. Eventually, I took a peek at my texts, and eased back into social media, but I loved the feeling of being without it all, and I wanted it to last.

When I got home, I made good on my promise not to tell people I loved them, but to SHOW them. I felt even more vulnerable than I had expected to, but with that vulnerability I was alive. When you are armored to protect from pain, you are armored from beauty as well. Every warm human interaction I saw made me cry, from a guy opening a door for a woman, to the kids in Stranger Things playing together. Seeing people be human affected me like never before. It was too much.

It was like the skin of my psyche had all been ripped off. It would grow back, but it needed time. Eventually, I put enough layers back on that I could function as a normal human being again, but I haven’t forgotten the lessons I learned in the dark.

The most important of which is to love the world as it is. You don’t have to change it; you have to change your mind, because you can choose the attitude you take toward any situation. The game of life is here for us to enjoy playing it. If we do, then we’ve played well.

We are all capable of much more than we think we are. We are worthy of love and able to give it in return.

You don’t need to spend a week in darkness to prove it to yourself. You could just put your phone away and sit alone for a little while and be still, or go for a walk in nature. That’s a good start.

Remember that we live at a banquet. There are so many amazing things in our lives we completely take for granted, like daylight, eyesight, music, and fresh air. In the world of polarity, we understand through contrast. If you never deprive yourself of anything, you can never really appreciate what they offer you. If you never fast, you’ll never realize that every meal is a feast. 

Sometimes you just have to choose nothing, so you can have everything. 

You can access my film, Awake In The Darkness, HERE. Directed by Ben Stewart, and featuring music from Nahko, Porangui, and Jon Hopkins, it shows the full journey of my time in the darkness. It’s like stepping right into the ceremony with me. I hope you enjoy it and share it with anyone who could use a little inspiration to live their life like a warrior poet.

The post Illumination: What I Learned Spending a Week in Total Darkness appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Since it is anything but lucrative, and absolutely no fun to sit injured on the bench, they’re very careful about what they put into their bodies and what they put their bodies through. Anything that is not serving them is quickly removed. They’ve talked to experts, experimented on themselves and found what works best for them.

While the stakes may be higher for them than anyone else, there are some easy action items you can use to be a champion of your own domain.

1. Champions Know When They Are Hydrated

The first thing Brian Cushing, 2009 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year, does in the morning is drink a glass of water.

After 8 hours of sleep, your body is dehydrated. It’s been working without water the entire time you were laying in bed. So one of the most powerful things you can do for your body is to drink a glass of water right away.

It’s not uncommon to see a football player running to the training room for a saline drip because of dehydration. Being dehydrated can cause cramping, so it hits athletes especially hard. Cramping can lead to a more serious injury if they’re not careful.

Unfortunately, unless you’re a pro player, you don’t have access to IV drips. And getting hydrated isn’t as simple as drinking a few cups of water to fill up your proverbial tank.

Your actual level of hydration is based on how much water your cells are holding. So when you drink water, it goes through a complicated diffusion process and you’ve got other areas of your body clamoring for water (like your intestinal lining), so it doesn’t go right where you want it to go right away.

The level of dehydration you feel when you just wake up is fairly minor. But the effects can ramp up quickly and they’re not pretty. Dehydration causes low energy, muscle cramping, confusion, and eventually, death.

While most of us will get enough water to survive, proper hydration is a key to optimizing performance on every level. Here are some tips to staying hydrated:

Choose Your Water Wisely

Water is one of nature’s best solvents, meaning that most of the solids it comes in contact with eventually dissolve into it.

Plastic Bottles – Certain plastics will dissolve chemicals such as BPA into the water, which can increase phytoestrogens and cause long term problems.

Tap Water – Most tap water contains chlorine for sterilization and fluoride apparently for teeth. The research on the benefits of fluoride for teeth is dubious and the safety of fluoride in high quantities has been called into question. While still a highly contested issue, it is best to steer clear as much as possible until the dust settles and a true determination can be reached.

Alkaline – Most alkaline water, including Kangen filters use a high quotient of dissolved solids to reach alkaline state. This can provide unbalanced mineralization, disturb stomach acid potency, and can be inherently dehydrating. While alkalinity is good, do it the old fashioned way with lemon water or apple cider vinegar.

Spring Water – Nature truly knows best. Switching to spring water helps you stay more hydrated during the night, meaning a better quality of sleep all around. Go to findaspring.com to harvest your own water, or if you are looking for a brand, check out Mountain Valley Spring water. It comes in glass bottles so it doesn’t leach potentially toxic chemicals into your water.

When using a water filtration system at home (to avoid all the potential crap in the municipal water system) it’s a good idea to add minerals back in. It’s as simple as adding a pinch of Himalayan salt in a glass of water.

Good filters do their job in helping remove stuff you may not want, but they also remove many important minerals. Notably, not all filters are created equal, so do your homework and find the one that suits you best.

Stop Doing Math and Drink

There is no magic formula for the amount of water you should be drinking. Depending on your habits, diet, workload, toxicity, etc every individual’s water needs will vary. As a general rule of thumb, err on the side of more water than not enough.

Avoid Dehydrating Factors

The main thing to remember, is that any time your body encounters a foreign body that alters the natural homeostasis, it is going to use water to flush it out. This includes a lot of the ‘fun’ stuff like Alcohol, Caffeine, THC, etc.

2. Champions Know Their Heart Rate

I’ve worked out with Bode Miller more than a few times and every time I do, I’m continually impressed by the diagnostics he’s running. At any given time, he can tell you exactly what his heart rate is.

Why does he care so much?

Your heart literally contains your lifeblood and is responsible for pumping oxygen to your muscles. Oxygen is what gives you aerobic energy.

Your resting heart rate is a good indicator of cardiovascular endurance and how healthy you are in general. This means your heart is efficiently moving blood throughout your entire body. When you are sick your resting heart rate generally rises. It’s got more to contend with.

Knowing your heart rate is key to knowing your body, but it’s not the only indicator of whether you should work out or how hard you should be working out. More on that in the next section.

Your maximal heart rate is a good indicator for max anaerobic capacity. Anaerobic capacity is how much energy you can produce beyond the scope of what oxygen and aerobic energy can provide.

You tap into anaerobic capacity during heavy lifts or sprints. To find your maximal heart rate, grab a heart rate monitor and go all out for about 20 minutes on a high intensity exercise like hill sprints, or a battle rope.

When you’re done, simply check the monitor and see what your max heart rate was. You could try counting it directly afterwards, but counting and keeping track of time after a max effort can be like trying to hold onto a cheetah’s tail while he’s running away.

Once you’ve got that and your resting heart rate, it’s easy to fit workouts into heart rate zones based on what your goals are. The optimal training rate can be divided into 5 zones, based off your maximum heart rate. Knowing what each zone means will help you manage intensity, train for your goals and develop all energy systems.

ZONE 1: Very Light
HR Max: 50-60%
Average Duration: 20-40 mins
Feels Like: Very easy, little strain.
Benefits: Warm up and cool down, active recovery, overall health. Performance improves during recovery, and light intensity training can help boost this.

ZONE 2: Light
HR Max: 60-70%
Average Duration: 40-80 mins
Feels Like: Comfortable, easy breathing, low muscle load, light sweating.
Benefits: Improves general fitness, boosts metabolism, active recovery, improves low level aerobic fitness and endurance. Long-duration training in zone 2 results in effective energy expenditure.

ZONE 3: Moderate
HR Max: 70-80%
Average Duration: 10-40 mins
Feels Like: Steady, controlled, fast breathing, light muscle
Benefits: Improves aerobic fitness and performance. Enhances general training pace, makes moderate intensity efforts easier and improves efficiency. Improves efficiency of blood circulation and lactate removal and turnover.

ZONE 4: Hard
HR Max: 80-90%
Average Duration: 2-10 mins
Feels Like: Muscular fatigue and heavy breathing.
Benefits: Increases performance capacity, increases anaerobic threshold and lactic acid tolerance.

ZONE 5: Maximum
HR Max: 90-100%
Average Duration: less than 5 mins
Feels Like: Maximal or near maximal effort for breathing and muscles.
Benefits: Develops maximum performance and speed. Improves anaerobic fitness, trains fast twitch muscle fibers and increases power.

Again, find out what your goals are and you can discover which zone will work best for you.

3. Champions Know When They Need To Recover

Triathlete Ben Greenfield is deep into the science of training and heart rate variability (HRV). Heart rate variability is the time between heart beats. There are slight differences between each beat and it’s those differences we’re interested in.

The best time to get your HRV is the same time you should find your resting heart rate – right when you wake up. Just grab a compatible heart rate monitor and an app like SweetBeat or BioForce and monitor it for 5 minutes.

A good score is 80-90 or higher. That means you’re good to go for a hard day. If the variability is high though, you’ll have a lower score because your your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems aren’t cooperating. If you’re in this state, it likely means that you’ve overreached.

Overreaching is what Ben prefers to call overtraining. Overtraining is technically full blown adrenal fatigue. You can’t produce adrenaline anymore and no matter how much you want to train, you can’t.

Overreaching is typically a state you’re in because you went HAM the day before and your body is still trying to recover. When you’re in that state, it’s not in your best interests to try and repeat your performance from the day before.

As much as you may want to, your body can’t handle it and it’ll let you know by making sure you can’t reach the max effort you’ve reached previously.

Champions track their HRV and make sure they’re in a good zone on competition days. That way they can pull the max effort out of their bodies instead of not being able to reach their potential.

But just because your HRV score is low doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything. Practice active recovery. Try some yoga, deep breathing exercises, go for a walk, sit in a sauna. There are dozens of ways you can still optimize yourself.

For more information about how to solve overtraining, listen to this podcast with Ben Greenfield.

4. Champions Know How To Compensate for Imbalances in the Body

I’m sure you’ve seen fencing champions and have wondered how they can possibly lead a normal life with one leg that’s so much bigger than the other. This, of course, is part of the sport.

By competing in a confined area where all strikes are more or less directly in front of them, they create their body in a way that performs best for their sport – which is by having a dominant lead leg and a weaker rear leg.

It works fine for them, but for everyone else, having such a disparity would crush their ability to play the sport.

Sure, a pitcher only uses one arm, but they need two to bat. Champions are aware of these imbalances and work hard to be almost as good with their weak side as they are with their dominant side. A more balanced body is stronger, faster, and more durable.

It’s one of the things we stress the most at the Onnit Academy. It’s so important that we’ve dedicated an entire course to it. Mobility, flexibility, and stability are the primary tenets of the program. It’s simple. We call this program Durability.

The more balanced you are, the more freely you can move in any direction, and the more stable you are in your movements, the less likely you are to get injured. Avoiding injury means you’re able to spend more time in the gym.

For champions, it means they’re able to spend more time playing the sport they love and getting paid to do it.

5. Champions Know How Input Affects Output

Food, supplements, and what you drink is your fuel. There’s no way around it. What you put into your body directly affects what you get out of it. Champions have talked directly with nutritionists and experimented with their meal plans to figure out what works best for them. When you need to work on a high level, you need to know everything you can about how it works and how it’s going to affect you.

I’m sure you’ve experienced it yourself. Some people do extremely well with whey protein. Other people can clear out the entire office. Brussels sprouts are on everyone’s ‘good list’ but will your body tolerate it without gas and inflammation?

Champions know what their body’s optimal fuel is. They can drill down and figure out their optimal ratio of macros and know how their body is going to respond if they drink a cup of coffee.

Your body is unique to you, so I can’t just hand you a meal plan and tell you to get after it. It’s going to take work, it’s going to take you listening to your body and tracking what you’re eating and the results you’re getting out of it. To be the champion of your body, you should be keeping a food journal and writing down how you’re feeling.

If you’re experiencing digestive issues or you’re not seeing the gains you want, but can’t figure out what’s wrong, try an elimination diet. Within a few weeks, you should be able to pinpoint the issue and get on track to total human optimization.

The post 5 Things Champions Know About Their Body (That You Should Know Too) appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Cheese is in the doghouse of just about every nutrition movement right now. The main knocks are that cheese is bad for your heart, and bad for digestion. But I ask, is the problem with all cheese or just some cheese? After all, in the cheese-crazed mania of the modern era where cheese comes in cans, pastes, and little plastic pouches, we have done worse things to cheese than bulldogs have done to stuffed animals. But Cheez-Whiz and Kraft singles are not exactly the same thing as my favorite grass-fed raw cheese.

So before we deny ourselves orgiastic cheese experiences, let’s examine the French Paradox diet phenomenon. Of all the great diets of the world, the French Paradox diet baffled mainstream food pyramid building, low-fat touting ‘nutritionists’ the most. Despite much higher saturated fat consumption, as well as a reported 60% more cheese, and 400% more butter (source), French people consistently rank lower than many countries in the world for obesity and coronary heart disease.

For many years, stuck on the confirmation bias that saturated fats were the devil, scientists implied that the phenomenon was actually due to everything from bad reporting to increased levels of red wine consumption. But recently, a massive meta analysis has confirmed the original hypothesis of the diet. Fat is all good.

In 72 unique studies with over 500,000 participants from 18 nations, the investigators found that saturated fat intake, whether measured in the diet or in the bloodstream as a biomarker, was not associated with increased coronary disease risk. (source)

Oopsies. But now back to cheese.

In France, hundreds of cheeses come in raw form, most are full fat, and French cheese experts consider raw milk cheese the absolute gold standard of good cheese (source). So bring on the Brie baby!

No Need to Cut the Cheese

So if cheese isn’t bad for your heart, what about the concerns regarding indigestion?

Once again it comes down to the fact that all cheeses are not created equal. Raw milk and goat milk both present a variety of benefits over pasteurized cow cheese. Whereas raw milk has shown significant benefits in inflammatory conditions such as asthma, goat milk has shown better tolerance in humans across the board.

Milk: The Raw Facts

Heat pasteurization is the standard for store bought milk, and was designed to destroy any and all bacteria that may be present in raw milk. However, along with destroying any pathogenic bacteria that may be present, it also destroys any potentially good bacteria as well.

A survey done of 2503 raw milk drinkers in Michigan revealed that 81% of them reported reduced symptoms of indigestion after having switched from store bought (pasteurized and homogenized) milk (source).

A subsequent pilot study at Stanford was not able to confirm a significant difference in consumption of milk vs raw milk for lactose intolerant individuals. This could be due simply to a small sample size, but many experts say that the study had an inherent flaw connected to the duration of analysis, which was only 8 days. Mark McAfee, Chairman of the Raw Milk Foundation explains, “It takes longer than eight days for beneficial bacteria to recolonize the gut of a severely lactose intolerant person. These good bacteria produce the lactase enzyme, which helps digest lactose.” With the patient group of 16 individuals, there was a slight but insignificant benefit for those ingesting the raw milk. “With more time, we would probably have seen statistically significant improvement,” says McAfee (source).

Evidence in other inflammatory conditions, such as allergies and asthma may tell a more compelling story. Three different studies totalling over 20,000 subjects all correlate the consumption of raw milk with a reduction in both allergies and asthma (gabriela) (parcifal) (amish).

G.O.A.T. Cheese

Goat milk exhibits similar if not even greater benefits than raw milk. The reason for this is that goat milk is a lot more like the milk that came out of our own momma’s mammaries! The biological resemblance to human breast milk goes all the way down to the dna structure itself. These similarities apply to protein structure (beta casein vs. alpha casein), prebiotic content (oligosaccarides), and fat structure (small/medium chain fatty acids vs long chain fatty acids). So what does all this mean?

A study in France demonstrated that 93% of infants showed less allergic reaction to goat milk than cow milk. (7. Freund G. Use of goat milk for infant feeding: experimental work at Créteil (France). Proceeding of the meeting Intérêts nutritionnel et diététique du lait de chèvre. Niort, France: INRA, 1996:119–21.)

Another great benefit is that goat milk is far more alkalizing to the body than bovine milk (source). This means that the body will require fewer minerals to buffer the dietary acid load, allowing you to stay charged up and mineralized for longer!

What cheese is the Greatest of All Time? Drumroll please…Raw goat cheese of course!

Conclusion

Cheese may not be the most nutritious thing you can eat, but there is no denying that it is a gift from the culinary gods. As with all foods the quality of sourcing matters, and practicing moderation is key. Raw cheese does contain a slightly higher risk of contamination than pasteurized cheese, and these cases are well documented. But when sourced from a clean provider with proper handling, the advantages seem fairly clear.

Goat cheese is just a no-brainer. And if you are worried about digesting lactose, a good enzyme formula like DigesTech® that contains lactase can really hook you up. So in the words of some good friends of mine, Keep Calm and Cheese On.

The post More Cheese, Less Whine appeared first on Onnit Academy.

The Steel Mace Endurance Battle #3 is a challenging series of 5 exercises done for 100 repetitions each. The goal of this workout is to rest as little as possible and complete the reps as quickly as possible. Even so, do not let your form degrade; rest as needed or decrease the weight if necessary. This Steel Mace workout is part of the Barbarian Steel Mace Workout Plan.

Workout Instructions

Perform all reps of each exercise before moving onto the next. Rest as little as possible during the set (with the goal of performing all reps without stopping).  Rest 60 seconds or less in between exercises.

A1: 360 – 50 each direction
B1: Barbarian Squats – 100 reps
C1: Slams – 50 each side
D1: Gravediggers – 50 each side
E1: Ballistic Curls – 100 reps

Other Workout Details

Workout Created By: Aubrey Marcus
Workout Demonstrated By: Aubrey Marcus
Equipment Used: Onnit Steel Mace

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The Steel Mace Endurance Battle #2 is a series of three exercises designed to challenge your explosiveness. The three exercises include to dynamic, explosive drills (the Steel Mace Plyo Lunge and Steel Mace Transfer Push Up) followed by the ballistic Shoulder Toss exercise. Try to finish the workout as quickly as possible without letting your form degrade.

Workout Instructions

Perform all reps of each exercise before moving onto the next group. Rest as little as possible during the set (with the goal of performing all reps without stopping). Rest 60 seconds or less in between exercises.

A1: Plyo Lunges – 50 each side
B1: Transfer Push Ups – 100 reps
C1: Shoulder Toss – 100 reps

Other Workout Details

Workout Created by: Aubrey Marcus
Workout Demonstrated by: Aubrey Marcus
Equipment Used: Onnit Steel Mace

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The Steel Mace Endurance Battle #1 will challenge your full body stamina with three Steel Mace exercises. Each movement requires full body endurance and coordination and should be done with proper form in mind. The goal is to complete all exercises as fast as possible while maintaining form.

Workout Instructions

Perform all reps of each exercise before moving onto the next. Rest as little as possible during the set (with the goal of performing all reps without stopping).Rest 60 seconds or less in between exercises.

A: Slams – 50 each side
B: Shoulder Toss – 100 reps
C: Gravediggers – 50 each side

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The Clockwork Steel Mace Workout involves the Steel Mace exercise standards: 306s and 10-to-2s. These rotational exercises are excellent for building upper body and core strength. The workout also includes Dragon Squats to hit your lower body as well!

Workout Instructions

Perform the entire Steel Mace workout as a single set with no rest in between exercises and 60 seconds in between sets. Perform 2-5 rounds of the circuit for a complete workout, or use 2 sets as a good workout finisher.

A1: 10-to-2 – 2 x 20
A2: Dragon Lunges – 2 x 20 each side
A3: 360 – 3 x 15 each direction
A4: Twisted Sword Draw – 3 x 20 each side

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The versatility of the Steel Mace extends beyond simple rotations with the 10-to-2. The imbalance and dimensions of Steel Mace can also be used for rotational strike and press drills!

Workout Instructions

Perform sets A, B, and C as individual circuits. No rest in between exercises; 60-90 seconds rest in between sets. For the Happy Ending (HE), perform 60 second sets with 30 second rest period between each set.

A1: Warrior Joust – 3 x 20 reps each side
A2: 10-to-2 – 3 x 20 reps
B1: Horse Stance Press – 3 x 20 reps
B2: 10-to-2 – 3 x 20 reps
C1: Twisted Sword Draw – 3 x 20 reps each side
C2: 10-to-2 – 3 x 20 reps
HE: Gravedigger – 4 x 60sec

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If you are looking to build your core strength with Steel Mace the Paddle Boarding exercise is a great choice. Moving the Steel Mace from side to side requires a core strength, endurance, as well as stability. The Steel Mace Paddle Boarding exercise is a great exercise that will work your core and lower body, as well as add shoulder and rotational strength. Try Paddle Boarding with a macebell and you will see how effective of an exercise it is.

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If you are looking to strengthen your shoulders, core, and grip, the Steel Mace Joust exercise is right up your alley. Moving the Steel Mace in this aggressive motion requires core strength, endurance, strong shoulders, as well as mid-line stability. The Steel Mace Joust exercise is an explosive exercise that will work your core and upper body, but also provide a challenge to your grip and lower body as well.

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