Jorg's Brain Log

As things are moving along, you sometimes have to change some basic stuff. I just moved my website back to the Netherlands, as most of my visitors come from here. So hopefully most of the users will experience that the website will get faster.

At the same time I moved my blog from the root of my domain name to the directory /blog so that I have some more possibilities to develop, test and expand.

This blog is going to change a little and a new one will soon arrive (yes another one, I know…) So keep an eye on the website and keep entering the site at www.jorgjansen.com because soon you will find something new over there instead of just a redirect to this blog.

One of the best feelings in the world is the feeling you have after you’ve done something that you were scared of doing and it worked out. The famous adrenaline rush keeps your mind and body filled with excitement and emotions.

For me personally I’m not as much of an adrenaline junk anymore as I used to be. But still I need my daily cravings of it. Some days I get a good shot, on other days not so much.

So what gives me a good adrenaline shot? When I’m in the squat rack with a 250 kilo barbell on my neck. When I’m doing a salto on my sons trampoline in the garden. When I jump off a stair with my inline skates on. When I rush down the mountain with my snowboard on. When I’m holding my breath and do some no limits freediving. When I jump of the kitchen roof into the garden. And the list goes on and on.

These are all things I do regularly and not fictional. It just feels great. In the next weeks I’m going to try some new stuff to get the adrenaline going. Got any tips? (maybe it’s smart to ask for serious tips, but what the hell)

By only eating right you already cover a great deal by taking care of your body. My you also have to give it the right stimulus to keep it in shape.

I always did a lot of sport since I was 6. So it comes natural to do a lot. In the last years I developed a way of sport that is low in volume (for me) and high in intensity. Sometimes I did 1,5 hours weightlifting per day. Let alone the cardio, stretching and other stuff I was doing. Those times are over.

In short these are the physical activities I’m doing or want to be doing:

• Weightlifting
• Running
• Swimming
• Cycling
• Freediving
• Athletics
• Inline skating and skateboarding
• and some more…

In the first 4 weeks I’m going to focus on only a few of them so I will be doing them right. That is: weightlifting, running, swimming and freediving.

For weightlifting I’m getting back to the bare essentials: squats, deadlifts and benchpresses. Those are the only exercises I’m going to do. Doing them once a week for 30 minutes (including warmups) will take me around 1,5 hours and give strength and explosive power

Running is my main form of cardiovascular work. I try to have 1 cardiovasclur moment per day. So I aim for 3 to 5 runs a week. 20 to 45 minutes, depending how I feel and what I want to do that way. This will help improve my cardiovascular ability and improve stamina. Total running time per week around 2 hours.

I try to swim twice a week. One technique training and one continues crawl session. Total time around 1 hour per week.

And last but not least freediving will give me the fun and training I need to add a specific sport to reach some goals with. More info about my training in this sport on the Sharkbait website. But in short: 1 pool training of around an hour and 1 outdoor per week of 1 hour. So 2 hours per week.

Total time spend on physical planned activity 6,5 hours. Pretty good and solid for now. And I don’t even count the inline skating and freediving drywalks I’m doing now, because they aren’t planned, those are just done when I want them to do.

In short here’s is somewhat of my schedule I try to keep in mind:

• Monday: Run, Weights
• Tuesday: Swim
• Wednesday: Run, Weights
• Thursday: Swim, Freediving Pool
• Friday: Run, Weights
• Saturday: Run, Freediving Outdoor
• Sunday: rest and recover

Number 1 on the list to focus on is that I should take care of my body. In short it means that I have to train it and feed it. So what am I doing in these 84 days with that? Let’s discus this in 2 different posts. Here’s in number 1

Lets start with the food part. I’m still on the paleo diet, that’s becoming more and more of a lifestyle. I made some changes to make it all somewhat easier and acceptable. Discipline but it has to be fun. In short here are my eating ‘rules’:

1. Eat 4 times a day – I used to try and eat very small meals 6 times a day, like a lot of people are advising. I’m just too busy to do that. So I set it back to 4 and I try to eat around 10, 13, 17 and 22 hours. If it’s somewhat later or earlier, it doesn’t matter.
2. Eat paleo food – legumes, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs. Normally that also includes fruit, but I backed away from that, to see if I’m really as sugar sensitive as I think I am.
3. Drink no calories – so no fruit juices or milk. Just water, light soda’s and any other drink that doesn’t contain calories.
4. Eat what you want – After a non-cardio training like lifting weights or some freediving your body needs calories in every form. It’s one of those moments where your body really can use everything you give to them. So before dinner, when our family eats together, I try to do a workout so that I can eat the same as the family.
5. No supplements! – this is a big one for me. I’ve used supplements in the form of multivitamin and protein shakes since, .. well forever. Time to spend the money I save on this on some other stuff. Like real meat!
6. Take a day off – Eat whatever I want on that day. It spike the calorie intake in by that keeps the metabolism going.
7. Don’t count calories – I used to do that a lot. It just becomes to must work and it’s not necessary if you eat the foods I listed at nr 2.
8. Prepare – I’ve taken this a step further. We now do groceries only one time a week. I have to think about the whole week and what I want to eat and need to buy. This works great because now we don’t have wrong food in house that I can take. At the same time, I prepare my food for 2-3 days ahead. instead of cooking 4 times a day.
9. Don’t make it difficult – I looked back at my logbooks and the time that I best hold onto my diet was when it was simplest. I remember the time that I ate chicken and rice six times a day, 6 times a week.
10. Mistakes happen – Okay, so I’m out and at the restaurant and I eat something wrong. so what? Doesn’t really matter as long as I can apply the 80/20 rule to them. 80% eating right costs me 20% of the energy to get it done. While trying to eat the last 20% of the time also right it will cost me 80% of the energy.

all in all some simple rules to keep track on. So this was the part were I feed my body, next post will be about how I train it.

I’ve said it many times before, but time really does fly! 84 days left before I turn 33. I think I started this countdown some time I was 20-22, more then 10 years ago now. When the countdown has reached 0, it’s time to look back and talk about this journey.

For now let’s focus on the journey. 84 days, that’s exactly 12 weeks left. What to do with these last 84 days, so that I will remember them forever?

I’ve thought about many things lately and how to set this up. Before writing a very long post again, it’s maybe better to divide it in the coming days and weeks. It’s more interesting to talk short and more frequently then to talk long and once a month.

So to start I’ve decided to break the 12 weeks in 3 and talk about the first 4 weeks over here. In the first 4 weeks I’ve set some goals that continue where I was left before going on snowboarding vacation. To be short I want to create a good combination of discipline and fun again in my lifestyle. Both keywords can’t exist separately in my life.

10 things to focus on:

1. Take care of Body
2. Create Adrenaline
3. Train Mind
4. Take Rest
5. Make Music
6. Read Books
7. Write, Write, Write
8. Have Fun
9. Family Love
10. Connect with Friends

In the first 4 weeks I try to find and optimal schedule that counts in the ‘I’m human and so is everybody around me’ factor. Setting up some regular and returning events in my schedule that will train my discipline and give me my regular fun.

I’ll talk about each step and what its setup will do for me in the next posts over here. Time to get to bed and take care of point 4.

As the rest of my life is getting more into structure again, the urge to put my head underwater was to great. I just wrote a post for our Team Sharkbait website explaining what I’m going to do again with freediving.

Furthermore I also found the inspiration again to do some posts for Shark Freediving! I’m not promising that it will be as regular filled as before, but who knows.

And now that I’m thinking about it, it’s also time to do a scuba dive again! That’s also a long time ago. Damn, my schedule is filling up rapidly like this!

After looking back at my history of phone numbers, email adresses and personal websites I have used over the years I thought it would be usefull for a small post with my latest contact information and some other links that link to my online presence. Let’s start of with the basics:

Keep in mind I have a new mobile number since March 2009!!!

Mobile phone: +31 634 027 003

E-Mail: jorg.jansen at gmail.com

Personal Website: www.jorgjansen.com

The above is also what is stated on my personal business card, so with the above info, you have it all. To make it a little more complete below you will find my online presence and how/why I use them:

• Friendfeed: My online presence aggregator! I’ve got a big gadget on my personal website. It collects most of my online stuff over here. So don’t bother reading the rest of the list, but everything interesting turns onsite here!
• Twitter: Everything done on friendfeed is also put on twitter
• Google Talk: my main use is actually not the IM function but the status update/lattitude function. I use this to update my status and location through my t-mobile G1 android phone. Friendfeed grabs the status and pushes it to twitter, hyves and some other status update function on some social websites.
• Google Reader: My RSS aggregator. Thinks I like or read I also share, sometimes with some extra comments with them.
• Google Calendar: Where I put all my appointments in. Everybody is free to watch my calendar and see when I’m in a meeting and not available on phone. Or when I’m free to plan an appointment.
• Skype: You can find me with the name jorgjansen. How convenient! now that I got it installed on my G1 phone I plan to use it a lot more just for calling. I don’t have it installed on my laptop, because I don’t like installing stuff on my laptop… I really need a netbook I guess.

My presence on different social networks:

• Linkendin: for my business network. If you have something interesting to mention/ask you’re free to add me.
• Facebook: Mostly used for my non-business international network.
• Hyves: The Netherlands has their own biggest social network called hyves and here’s my profile. Looking through it now it’s maybe to clean up a little bit.
• I’m also on Plaxo, Myspace, Orkut and districtworld but I seem to loose more and more interest in these networks.

Other stuff:

I’m on many more popular websites, but that’s probably not so interesting to mention here. You can follow activity on those mostly through my friendfeed page. Think Digg, Chi.mp, Brightkite, Goodreads, Flickr, Picasa, Last.fm, Reddit, Slideshare, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Youtube and many many more.  My up to date list contains 221 websites I’m subscribed to, and I didn’t even dare to look at my notepad filled with website info.

So all in all, enough options to reach me!

Finally back behind my laptop. I was on winter sport for the first time of my life. It was a great experience! Not only was it great to do some snowboarding but I also learned a lot; about myself, others, general stuff and not so general stuff.

My girlfriend stayed home with the kids and I went together with Sanne and his girlfriend. So all in all, I was pretty much boss of my own time, not influenced by urgent needs from the kids or other appointments and agreements. I planned to do a lot of snowboarding and the rest of the time find some rest by reading books and watching movies that I brought on my laptop.

We drove from Eindhoven to Solden (Austria) on Saturday 7th of march in a good pace. Starting at 6:30 and arriving in Austria around 13:30. But the last 100 km took us around 3 hours, so by the time we came in our rented pension we were pretty tired. A quick pizza and beer for dinner and after picking up our rented gear and after that it was pretty much over with the energy.

On Sunday morning it was our first day. And after studying the map of the ski region it was pretty clear that our pension location was very good. Only a 3 minute walk to the first elevator! After paying a ridiculous amount of money for a 6 day ski pass, we walked to the lift and went up. It’s a pretty fast ride of around 10 minutes that brings us from 1300 meters to 2300 meters at the giggibach pistes. Sun was shining, weather was good and I had a knot in my stomach from what I was seeing.

I think I have snowboarded before for around 12 times or so. But all the time it was on a great indoor piste. 550 meters long, elevator inside and everything. And I thought I was prepared and ready to go. I must admit that when I took the lift to the first blue piste (the easy one!) and I looked down I really second guessed if I was ready and why I was going to throw myself from a mountain. After attaching the bindings correctly and standing on my board for several seconds, my adrenaline-jorg took offer and a little voice said: go go go…

You can prepare as extensivly as you want, but nothing beats just trying the real thing! First lesson learned: If you’re afraid to fall, you will never learn anything!

After a few times up and down the piste it was becoming more and more easier to manoeuvre all the ways I wanted to and I even began to relax a little bit on my board. As soon as I relaxed on my board, the board took the way with the least resistance and that was not the way my body was going. Major wipe out. Lesson 2: Don’t be too comfortable soon, prepare for the unexpected!

After 3 hours non stop on the piste it was time to take a lunch. Down at our rooms we relaxed and ate a bit and at the same discussed what we were going to do. We looked at the map and decided it was time to find the highest point and take the long way back. What sounded like a great idea, became a long trip down feeling like a triple marathon. Because we did the 12 kilometer route in the afternoon many people already destroyed the snow with their ski’s making bumps and holes everywhere in the route. Bumps and holes are maybe fun for skiers but not for snowboarders, or at least boarders called Jorg!

Lesson 3: Don’t take the road much traveled! It’s boring and you don’t learn a thing!

We came back exhausted after this long trip, but all in all in was a good first learning day. There were many more lessons coming up in the next 5 days!

So what’s the status of my 12 weeks schedule? 6 weeks have passed, and I have 6 weeks to go. In short: things are looking good! Below a more detailed overview on where I’m standing at the moment.

Things I’m proud of:

• did a 1500 crawl swim without stopping or resting
• ran for 1 hour, also without stopping or resting
• improved my strength big time
• lost 7,5 kilo’s
• learned to cook some food! (if you want to eat healthy you have to cook and not order)
• in control of my food rages!
• discipline to do some sport activity, even when I don’t feel like it! Afterwards it feels double as good.

Some numbers. In the 6 weeks, 42 days I:

• did some sport on 28 days. didn’t sport 14 days.
• went swimming 10 times, for a total of 9,3 kilometers
• went running 5 times, for a total time of 2:34 hours
• went to the gym 18 times for a total time of 9 hours
• did a total of 15 hours and 20 minutes of sport.

So I’m pretty happy what I’ve done. Only thing I’m missing at the moment is the stretching part I did not start yet. Maybe next week! Oh and I’m 0,5 kilo’s behind schedule at the moment. So I have to break through the 118 kilo barrier at the moment.

Only 6 more weeks to go and I’m motivated big time! Let’s continue to create a healthy lifestyle wich in turn creates a healthy body as well.

Some rules: 4 times a week cardio, 4 times a week fitness, good eating paleo style, start stretching!

You can follow my daily updates on training through friendfeed or twitter!

Again too long of inactivity on my blog. Only 150 days until my birthday and I must say the future looks very different than only a week ago.

Questions I’ve been asking myself for years seem to have clearer answers at the moment. Even some of them transformed from bad to good answers so that’s positive.

The last 1,5 years really changed my life, as well in my personal life as in my professional life. And just when you think that this is it, this is what I was counting down for, something else happens that put everything else in perspective and make me look at the countdown at a whole different way.

As you can see in my friendfeed I still have been very busy with a lot of stuff. I’m especially glad that I’ve found the time again, thanks of the support from my girlfriend and friends, to do some serious sporting again. In a later update I’ll post my progress with that.

Oh and before I forget: Happy Birthday to my sister who turns 26 today! Cheers!