Jorg's Brain Log

What an appropriate rule to write about. Currently I’m on vacation with my family. Nothing gives me a bigger reset and rest then being in another environment. The Take Rest rule is of course referring to a well deserved vacation, but also to a lot other things. Lets list some rest moments in my life.

• Nightly sleep: pretty clear of course. My 5-6 hours of sleep that include falling asleep and waking up
• Power-nap: sometimes I take 20 minute mini sleep half way the day to energize me
• Night out: going out for dinner and/or see a movie gives my mind a quick fix
• Day away: visiting a zoo or fun-park is always fun. Most of the time I come back tired and need to relax in the evening after this
• Night away: not sleeping in your own bed gives you always a vacation feeling.
• Weekend vacation: Even when I have to work from Monday to Friday. I can still take a small vacation by leaving on Friday evening and returning on Sunday evening

All the above are pretty obvious rest moments, but don’t forgot my micro rest moments:

• 2 minutes rest between different exercises during fitness
• 1 minute rest between sets during fitness
• 2 minutes rest between static attempts or constant weight dives during freediving
• 10 minute rest after every 50 minutes I work or study

All in all, you need rest for recovery. Recovery for the mind and recovery for the body. Processing all the stimulus mind and body receives and preparing for the next battle.

In the last few weeks I’m doing a lot of writing again. Writing can be a lot of fun and rewarding if you can find the passion in it. And I’ve found it again. I thought I would give an overview of all my current writings and where to find them.

www.jorgjansen.com

My personal website with my own ramblings about the stuff I find interesting. I’m currently splitting up some stuff between personal and professional interests. So the current blog where you read this post will be personal from now on. Like an online open personal diary of my live. Think Jorg’s Lifestyle archive, or something like that.

www.shark-freediving.com

The Team SharkBait website with entries from our personal freediving experience and trainings. Sanne Buurma and I mostly alternate to write something for the blog as long as it has some of the following keywords in it: personal, freediving, training

www.shark-freediving.com

My website for your daily portion of freediving news. Competition coverage, record stories, national news, etc. Loads of stuff going on over there.

My Book

Inspired by Sanne after some talks I decided to write a book. I’m just in the first months of it, but for me it’s an interesting project by itself. I’ve never written a book before, so lets see how far I can come. What’s it about? Can’t tell yet, but I will let you know as soon as I know it for myself.

New Blog

As we speak I’m setting up a new blog on my personal website. It’s a blog were I write about my professional interests. At the moment I really want to focus on there, so I’m wrestling a little bit about the topics, because I’m interested in so many things. I’m also still deciding if I should write in Dutch or English on this blog. As soon as it goes online I will announce it here as well.

That’s it with regards of the writings. I hope to put my writings to higher speed when my new home office is finished. Concentration is key in writing, especially with my distracting mind.

Live like you will die tomorrow, learn like you will live forever

I’ve made my choice to improve, improving by training many aspects of life. Training my mind to improve is a very important part of it.

A friend of mine once said; “Jorg, I sometimes wished I was just happy with a beer and watching TV, that would would make live so much easier.” So true in many aspects. One of the things that come with a great sense of self reflection is the fact you want to improve in what you do.

So how to train my mind, one of the parts I want to improve? My learning comes from several ways:

• Experience
• Observe
• Read
• Discus

What makes us human is that we have the ability to look at ourselves from an outside perspective. No other species can do this. My experiences during my life and self reflection that happens afterwards are therefor what makes me human. I experience something and then I can observe this experience from another view. The precise reason why I can improve and learn from what I’m doing. Furthermore I can add knowledge to fill in the blanks of my own observations by reading and by discussing.

So what exactly am I training my mind in at the moment?

• Language: I’m fluent in Dutch and English, but I also have 7 years of French lessons behind my belt. I didn’t do anything with it since school, but I really want to pick it up again. Got some other wishes on this front, but first focus on French again.
• Human Physiology: I was and still am very much interested in the human body. Learning new stuff about it is always interesting
• Psychology: Everything about human actions.
• ICT Technology: Especially interested in innovations with regards to cloud computing, social web, augmented reality and some other high tech stuff
• Business skills: stuff like how to manage, how to give a presentation, how to be a good salesmen, etc. The basic skill set you need to have to be a good leader.
• Sports: Especially weightlifting, cardiovascular work, stretching, underwater sports, periodization, training methods, coaching, etc.
• Nutrition: The latest nutrition developments and general knowledge are always interested.
• Others: everything that will keep my mind at work is interesting, think autobiographies, quantum mechanics, history, topography.

There is always something interesting to train my mind with. In general I try to read 2 books a week, which normally isn’t really a problem.

If anybody got any good book recommendations in the above categories, please let me know. Always looking for something interesting to read!

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!

I thought I would give an update again on what is going on at the moment in the life of Jorg. 2009 is already an interesting year and there is so much going on.

One of the things I’m the most proud of is that I’m really sporting again. Not like 1-2 times a week, but a real schedule with set goals and everything. On January 4th I started my ‘getting back in shape, start sporting and loose many kilo’s’ schedule and I must say it worked real well. I lost 10 kilo’s, did 4 fitness sessions a week, 2 times running and 2 times swimming and some freediving. All in all it felt great to be back in the gym, water and on the road.

3 weeks ago I tested my body in the snow: 1 week of snowboarding, and I noticed  that my body was again more ready for the task than 3 months before. But apparently I was not done yet; the week after snowboarding I was sick (it was a long time ago!). My throat hurt like hell and I had to cough every few minutes. So while I wasn’t really down, sport wasn’t an option either. Last week I still felt some pain in my throat but I decided to start with some cardiovascular work again: some running and swimming. While it wasn’t that easy as normally because of my throat I still managed to get some work done.

Stupid thing is, that once you get out of your schedule, everything get mixed up. Besides barely sporting for the last 2 weeks, I also dropped my newly build eating habits. And in conclusion I added 2 kilo’s, getting back to a healthy 118 kilo’s. You want to know what a healthy 118 kilo’s can do? Check this!

So physical activity was good in the last months, but not really in the last weeks. So time to improve again! From today on, I’m back on a good schedule. Rule: Minimum physical activity a day: 20 min

I will publish my whole sport/life schedule later on. It’s an intense but low volume schedule! More sport moments and less time spend on sport. So that I’ve got time to develop the mind as well.

In the last few weeks I discovered books again. When I was around 20 years old I did a speed reading course by Tony Buzan to get me through my study books. I used it for several years but afterwards I somewhat forgot about the technique. As I was reading again some books in the last weeks, I started applying the techniques again and speed went up big time again. I don’t really have as much time as I would like for reading but I still manage to do around 1000 pages a week. That’s around 2-4 books a week, and it’s a good schedule I try to keep up with. The last 3 weeks I read 9 books and 4 were really interesting and gave my some good new useful knowledge.

Due to some professional changes (I will write about this later) I also had the opportunity to spend a lot more time with my kids and girlfriend and learned the importance and pleasure in this again. Time with them is the most important thing in the world to me so it was good to be so close again and be in their 9 to 5 lives for a few weeks.

Sleeping has been terrible the last weeks. Where I normally slept for around 4-5 hours each night, I now regularly sleep for around 6-9 hours and still feel tired afterwards. Now, I’m going to give my girlfriend the fault for this because she needs a lot of sleep and she likes it when we go to bed at the same time. But damn, it’s so frustrating to go to bed at around 23:00 hours and get up at 8:00 and still like to stay in bed. This has to change big time, now! It just doesn’t work. So I’m going to set the sleeping pattern back to 6 hours a night (still much more than the regular 4-5 hours), and do a micro sleep in the afternoon. I want to sleep and not feel tired afterwards!

The above where just a few things I’m busy with improving. There are some interesting projects going as well, but that’s for another blog post later on.

Enough on me for now! How’s your life going on and how are you trying to improve it?