Craig Constantine

Boosting your adaptive reserves →

Published May 2, 2015 · All posts on May 2 · Health

Heart rate variability turns out to be a generalized, deep measure of health. That’s because higher HRV is a strong indicator of resilience to stress, while low HRV is a sign of reduced capacity to tolerate stress. And at the deepest level, health is resilience, and diseases in various ways compromise resilience.
~ Todd Becker from, Track your HRV to boost adaptive reserves

This is a REALLY good article on understanding heart rate variability. Turns out, the MORE your heart rate varies — in terms of the variation of the timing from one beat to the next — the more that indicates good cardiovascular health. I found that idea to be counter-intuitive. I would have guessed, wrongly, that the more regular the heart beats were, the better.

Your vote didn’t matter →

Published May 1, 2015 · All posts on May 1

My working hypothesis had been that Obama was a lying bastard when trying to get elected and didn’t actually care about civil liberties, or even limiting foreign wars military actions. It now occurs to me that maybe he does care about these things but just finds himself unable to change government policy.
~ Vikram Bath from, «http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2014/11/06/your-vote-didnt-matter»

FitBit Charge HR →

Published April 29, 2015 · All posts on Apr 29 · Parkour, Health, My Journey

This entry is part 16 of 72 in the series My Journey

I’m working with a friend of mine — Mike Bowyer — on a designed, intentional, training program. One of the critical components is working for specific times in very particular heart rate zones. So I’ve bitten the bullet, and am trying a FitBit. Online commentary seems to be that it’s not super-accurate, but I’m hoping it will do at least an ‘ok’ job of thoroughly recording heart rate during — saw this coming didn’t you? — parkour activities.

…until I smash it on a brick.

The End →

Published April 28, 2015 · All posts on Apr 28

It’s taken me nearly a year to go through the 2,000 odd photographs and videos that Mike and I took. Time well spent.

Looking back over the posts continues to bring back floods of memories.

th-th-th-th-that’s ALL FOLKS!

Longevity and membrane saturation →

Published April 28, 2015 · All posts on Apr 28

This entry is part 16 of 25 in the series M. Eades' Blog

The cell membranes of both young and old honey bee queens are highly monounsaturated with very low content of polyunsaturates. Newly emerged workers have a similar membrane fatty acid composition to queens but within the first week of hive life, they increase the polyunsaturate content and decrease the monounsaturate content of their membranes, probably as a result of pollen consumption. This means their membranes likely become more susceptible to lipid peroxidation in this first week of hive life. The results support the suggestion that membrane composition might be an important factor in the determination of maximum life span.
~ Michael Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/longevity-and-membrane-saturation/»

Dunbar’s number →

Published April 27, 2015 · All posts on Apr 27 · Society

Dunbar’s Number is a favorite blunt diagnosis for the pains that affect rapidly growing teams. The number, which is somewhere between 100 and 250 describes a point at which a group of people can no longer effectively maintain social connections in their respective heads. What was simple from a communication perspective becomes costly. What was a familiar family that you saw wandering the hallway becomes Stranger Town.
~ Rands from, The Old Guard

slip:4uraai4.

Also, Dunbar’s Number on Wikipedia.

UNESCO’s best kept secret →

Published April 26, 2015 · All posts on Apr 26 · Parkour

I was recently made aware of a UNESCO document known as their “International Charter for Physical Education and Sport”. I’m quite sure not a lot of people even know of its existence (and most certainly not within our community). This document contains some of the most beautiful thoughts and ideas on physical education and sport that I have ever come across, and what is more interesting, a lot of them seems to be identical with what we believe is good, beautiful and right with our chosen discipline of parkour/freerunning/ADD.
~ Mikkel Rugaard from, UNESCO’S Best Kept Secret

Creating habits that stick →

Published April 25, 2015 · All posts on Apr 25 · Motivation, Daily Practice

Rather than try to force myself every day, I simply created a “micro-habit” that I knew would lead to the intended behavior. A micro-habit is a single, tiny action that necessarily leads to a bigger action.
. . .
But here’s the trick: Once you perform the micro-habit enough times, it becomes much harder NOT to complete the entire habit than to simply do the whole thing.
~ Maneesh Sethi from, How to Create Habits That Stick

slip:4uaoho1.

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy →

Published April 23, 2015 · All posts on Apr 23 · Thought and Philosophy

The Misconception: You take randomness into account when determining cause and effect.
The Truth: You tend to ignore random chance when the results seem meaningful or when you want a random event to have a meaningful cause.
~ David McRaney from, The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

slip:4uyote2.

Low-carb adaptation →

Published April 22, 2015 · All posts on Apr 22

This entry is part 15 of 25 in the series M. Eades' Blog

There is an adaptation period that takes place when starting a low-carb diet. Someone who has been on a high-carb diet–the standard American diet, for example–has to metabolize a lot of sugar. All metabolic processes require enzymes to carry them out. Our DNA codes for these enzymes, but we don’t make them unless we need them. And when we do need them it takes a while for them to get brought up to the necessary levels. So, when we’re on a high-carb diet, we’ve got a lot of sugar-metabolizing enzymes kicking around, ready to metabolize sugar. All the sugar-metabolizing pathways are working efficiently.
~ Michael Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/lt-frederick-schwatka-and-low-carb-adaptation/»