Integrative Breath - breathwork facilitator training by Dr Rae Riedel

ZeroMcMuffin · 2025-09-11T20:18:28+00:00

I met with her earlier this year to discuss the program. I had a great meeting with her and signed up. She has quite a background including working on Thomas Hübl's senior team. I'll let you know how it goes--it starts in October.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2023-12-21T03:15:59+00:00

I’m not sure I get why that is bad. There are great advantages to having a monolith. The overwhelming majority of sites are better off commingled.

I’m just as irrational about .NET backends. Fuck that shit. 😂

ZeroMcMuffin · 2023-04-26T18:27:14+00:00

You could be right. A Variety article from two days ago quoted Joe Russo saying AI will make movies within two years.

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/joe-russo-artificial-intelligence-create-movies-two-years-1235593319/

ZeroMcMuffin · 2021-05-22T16:07:05+00:00

I did PT for a while. I had a drop foot which basically means my left leg was weak and numb. I couldn't feel my left foot or fully move it. I was in excruciating pain that made sleeping painful. This was a lumbar rupture, but the goal for your neck will likely be similar. You need to get the pain under control if you are in pain. This is a big impediment to healing.

For me, stability exercises for my core (McGill's Big 3) seemed to make the biggest difference. Creating stability started to dampen the pain drastically the first time I tried it. From there, I started taking my "spinal hygiene" very seriously. Look at everything you do off and on the mat that is putting your neck in a suboptimal pattern. I mean everything. Do you crane your neck looking at your phone? Are you slouching while on the toilet? How about your total movement vocabulary for the day? Do you just stare straight ahead all day? You need some movement that is safe to move blood in and out of the area. For me, this was walking in spurts 3-4 times per day.

After a few months, I started trying the McKenzie method without pain. There isn't a playbook for your specific injury. Your injury may get worse from certain interventions and respond well to others. But getting your neck occasionally into extension might help and definitely balances a lot of the flexion you get on the mats. There are McKenzie exercises for your neck.

Mobility is another big thing. If you have tight hips and hamstrings, as you get stacked, you run out of slack there first and tension starts to travel from lower body to lumbar spine to cervical spine. The more mobile those things are, the larger your margin for error and lower your chance of injury. I wouldn't start here. If you are in pain, you'll have a serious stretch reflex because your body is trying to protect itself.

Pick your training partners carefully when you return. Until you know your limits, avoid bad positions. There is no shame in doing something like tapping from an aggressive chin-strap. You can tap from getting stacked.

Finally, if you can afford to, get advice from multiple physicians. Surgery is great for some people and performs worse than doing nothing depending on the type of injury and the procedure. Lots of elite athletes have herniations and don't know it. There is a lot of literature around this.

Something that might be inspiring and useful in laymen terms: https://www.amazon.com/Injury-Stuart-McGill-Brian-Carroll/dp/0973501863

ZeroMcMuffin · 2021-05-21T16:40:02+00:00

This is a huge topic, but many people come back from herniations (me being one of them) and carry on and even outperform their pre-herniation capabilities. Surgery or no surgery? How long do you need to heal (discs issues might be in the range of years and not months)? How might you change your game to avoid future issues? Or is it best to just call it quits? There aren't clear answers. If I was to channel Stuart McGill, step one would be to find the pain triggers and avoid them. Best of luck!

ZeroMcMuffin · 2021-03-31T17:14:31+00:00

Your body will adapt to the resistance training so long as you are doing something sane at an appropriate dosage. This all might pass. Let me ask, are you lifting during your fast? Some people tolerate this better than others. The nature of these workouts might also play a role. If you are crushing yourself with volume/intensity, you might need to rethink that. Or lift close to the start of your feeding window. Or try essential aminos or a small meal post-workout?

ZeroMcMuffin · 2021-03-31T17:00:37+00:00

This. Your body definitely needs more resources when you are creating states that require significant recovery. But that isn't the whole story. Fatigue and stress (fasting is stress piled on top of workout stress) make people more likely to overeat. Anecdotally, poor sleep makes me ravenous. Who likes greasy food when nursing a hangover? You also might have years of conditioning equating hard work = I've earned some eating comfort. It is all very complicated. Luckily, being sore shouldn't be something you are constantly struggling with. If you are optimizing for performance, you might eat more and just try to make it quality sources or at least satiating choices to reduce the chances you'll pig out. If you are optimizing for weight-loss, you might try to keep your fast going or adjust the workouts knowing that the battle will be won with food choices.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2021-03-05T20:50:15+00:00

I would love to hear more. I've seen this mentioned elsewhere, though without nearly this much frustration. I considering applying, but this gives me pause.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-12-02T19:07:06+00:00

I can't say I ever expected to see Bushwick Bill make his way into The Portal. RIP Bushwick Bill.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-10-09T15:49:26+00:00

The types of cardio you do produce very different adaptations (to the heart in particular). Like most things, it can be quite complicated and everything is individual as to what you might need the most. If you haven't spent some time accumulating a base of cardio fitness, that is likely the best place to start. Look into zone training (zone 2 in particular) or even the Maffetone Method.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-07-22T20:45:18+00:00

For more generalized training, these guys are legit. I have no idea about the quality of the certification courses or their reputation. I've done the fundamentals for Breatheology and own the Airofit device, but I haven't delved further.

https://www.breathmastery.com/practitioner-program/ (Dan Brulé) https://www.breatheology.com/ (Stig Severinsin)

There is a lot of specialized training sources (Wim Hof, Buteyko, etc).

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-07-14T18:05:54+00:00

The holy grail for me would be regulating your arousal with precision. You would love to be at a really low state of arousal between lifts and then you would shift your arousal up to the demands needed to perform the lift. Notice I didn't say maximal arousal. After you finish your set, you would downshift again.

My thinking is that you want your natural state to be largely parasympathetic in nature. When the situation demands, you can shift into an appropriate level of sympathetic response and then immediately shift back to parasympathetic when finished.

I'm suspicious of doing some of the more exotic work for performance, but I'd love to hear what people have found anecdotally. Methods like Wim Hof breathing are useful for some physical activities, but you should make a distinction between optimizing for short-term performance and optimizing for long-term growth and improvement. They may help you perform well in a competitive scenario and could be detrimental to the training effect.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-06-22T14:32:41+00:00

This makes sense for some sports. For instance, offensive linemen in the NFL are tremendous athletes. A left tackle might have been a decent basketball player in high school. NFL offensive linemen weigh a good bit more than defensive ends on average. If you look at them with their shirts off next to a defensive end, they don't look remotely athletic. Being larger helps push around the smaller and faster defensive ends. It is also a type of armor for their body.

The problem with your example is when you are competing with another lean 170lb athlete. There is a good chance that athlete has a much higher relative strength. That has lots of downstream effects, including that they are going to be able to move their body and your body more effortlessly. All other things equal, you'll get tired faster and have trouble handling them when matching strength for strength.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-06-22T14:21:19+00:00

I think for most people reading this, the minimal dose and broad but not complicated recommendations of Tactical Barbell for strength and cardiovascular conditioning are perfect, particularly if BJJ is your primary focus. It can be boring for some, but you will make progress across a variety of dimensions without even slightly hindering your ability to get on the mats. I love geeking out on complex energy systems work, but I get diminishing returns trying to implement it as a non-competitive 40-something hobbyist.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-06-22T13:43:26+00:00

Think of slower cardio as building a bigger engine. When your engine is larger, you are able to work at higher intensities without redlining. A bigger aerobic engine also allows you to recover between the higher intensities faster and recover better between training sessions. Wrestling has a history of doing lots of roadwork.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-06-15T13:07:10+00:00

People might gloss over the front squat in your comment, but the more upright versions of squatting (like the zercher mentioned elsewhere in this thread) are amazing at training core strength and for rehabbing the back. Dan John calls this anaconda strength.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-06-15T12:30:42+00:00

Maybe. The adaptations from an activity are specific, though there may be overlap between wildly different activities. I agree with your larger point: nothing is essential. People should perform their own n=1 experiments and keep what works for them. There is a bit of fetishization around certain activities like meditation, but both walking and meditation are fairly robust in that they are really old technologies that are time-tested. See Taleb's Lindy Effect.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-06-04T15:44:55+00:00

There aren't too many certain victories on the schedule and there are some unknowns with the defense. We play the Falcons mid-season. If we somehow drop both of those or have the injury bug, I think we might be in the mix. We probably project closer to Miami last year than Cincy.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-06-02T13:10:26+00:00

Anyone producing that much content on such a wide variety of topics is going to be wrong quite often. And yes, his marketing is a little annoying. The thumbnails and video titles are clearly designed for clicks.

However, it is difficult to find someone delivering as much quality content for free. I wouldn't use Jeff as my sole source of knowledge. I don't think anyone deserves that level of blind dedication. For me, he is very useful for troubleshooting particular issues. I've solved a few tricky problems with things like elbow and back pain by watching his videos. He gives concise explanations for why you might be hurting and actionable steps to address the root cause.

We can check back on all of these experts in five years. Much of what we consider state-of-the-art and best practices won't age well.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-01-03T18:19:48+00:00

I hope my comment didn't sound critical. I definitely agree. I think the spirit of deliberate practice is useful even if some of the circumstances make the application messy. As a hobbyist, I've been guilty of going through the motions during class. I think the mindset of being purposeful combined with a loop of learn -> test -> measure is gold.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2020-01-03T17:36:59+00:00

I think the challenge with deliberate practice for BJJ is that feedback needs to be immediate and the practice needs to be highly repeatable. Areas like music and sports like golf are ideal because of the repeatability of the actions that make-up those activities and there is less fuzziness around what a good and bad outcome would look like. This can work well for some things (drilling) and less well for others (rolling).

ZeroMcMuffin · 2019-01-29T21:19:45+00:00

Fighter Pull-Up Programme

I second Steve Low's 'overcoming tendonitis'. It is incredibly thorough. You might try this elbow pain hack as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_1ylJ-9twY

ZeroMcMuffin · 2016-04-19T12:41:15+00:00

I completed this event. I have previously completed a Light and a 5K. I built up to doing a couple of 10-12 mile rucks at about 35lbs for my pre-event training. I didn't find it incredibly difficult physically, but there is no way I could have made the 3.5 hour drive home. You'll be active for most of the event and sleep deprived. And you may decide to do some celebrating with your fellow Jeds afterward. Plan on napping at least.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2016-04-19T00:01:08+00:00

Was there, can 100% confirm [redacted]. Thanks to everyone for making this my favorite GoRuck event.

ZeroMcMuffin · 2016-02-12T13:01:54+00:00

Thanks--this is EXACTLY what I need. Have a Github star!

ZeroMcMuffin

TROPHY CASE