The Inverse Power of Praise-How Not To Talk to Your Kids

This is an article from 2007 that changed my perspective about parenting. I think about the concepts probably every single day.

How Not to Talk to Your Kids - the inverse power of praise

Read it and let me know what you think. It caused me - and many other parents I've sent it to - to reevaluate some of the basic assumptions of being a good parent or a good coach.

OKAY It's long so if you are too busy the essence is that even a simple comment like "I'm proud of you" can suggest to the kid he/she is performing to impress others. If you say, "you're smart, you're a great musician, you're a great athlete," its possible for the kid to attach self-esteem to these characterizations and perhaps withdraw from higher challenges to protect the characterization, or become self-image become too wrapped up in the label (e.g., I thought of myself as a triathlete, until one day I was no longer a triathlete. OOPS!)

If you tell a child, "you're smart", "'you're beautiful" its possible for the child to become socialized to overvalue their innate intelligence or physical beauty and trade on that in life instead of work hard to constantly grow and improve. The article also says that a kid already learns early on they are smart, athletic, physically attractive and it's not necessary to drum these points to boost self-esteem.

Since 2007 reading, with my kids I always try to praise the effort and minimize importance of results or external measurements and judgements. 

I say, "great effort, you have worked really hard, you should be proud of yourself". With my kids I might say things like, 'wow your hair looks great', 'that was a really thoughtful question,' 'that drawing is really interesting and realistic,' or 'you play the game the right way,' you did a good job passing the ball', 'you gave 100% the whole game', or also, 'you are a beautiful person', 'you're a great kid'


Contrast this with sentiments like 'you're so pretty', 'you're so smart', 'you're the best athlete in the whole school,', or even worse, 'you so deserved to get homecoming queen instead of her', 'you should be in the starting lineup instead of him'. Statements like these devalue effort and set up a flawed mentality of referencing one's worth externally instead of emphasizing effort and internal satisfaction. 

How To Lose That Last 10 Pounds

Here is a message I wrote to a client after we got talking about that frustrating challenging of losing the last 10 pounds of excess body fat. Often, people make great initial progress with fat reduction and then stall while still a bit above their ultimate goal.

Homeostasis: First, understand that the body likes to achieve homeostasis, so losing fat over a period of time might require a plateau period as your body's way of maintaining status quo. Do you feel better, sleep better, eat better, perform better than before? This would be great news and now you can make a plan to progress further.

The more fat-adapted you are, the easier it is for you to make some concerted efforts to Intermittent Fast and eat meals off your fat stores rather than your plate. If you are still slightly carb dependent, then fasting won't work and you'll just slow down metabolic rate. If you can have some days where you eat less food and fewer carbs than normal you can make spurts of progress.

Wakesurfing - a super high intensity workout great
for weight loss....NOT. But it's incredibly fun!

Set Point: Very importantly, when your body reaches a genetically comfortable set point, you have to shock your body with high intensity sprint efforts to achieve further fat loss. If your genetic influences have you at x% body fat right now (dang! thats higher than your neighbor who's genetic influences have her looking more like Gwyneth Paltrow than you! Unfair!) ......and you want to drop 10 more lbs, you can consider conducting a sequence of brief duration, very high intensity sprint sessions. Running/weight bearing obviously the best choice, but if you are not adapted to run sprints now, you can do bicycle sprints or uphill sprints (low or no impact options).

Intensity and Fasting: I like pairing these intense efforts with Intermittent Fasting to turbo charge fat burning in the body. So you do your sprints in the am, after ~10hrs of fasting, then fast as long as possible after the workout until you really get hungry and want to eat. Weight bearing sprints send a strong signal to body to reduce excess fat. High intensity, short duration strength workouts will also deliver results in this area. Longer duration (30, 45, 60 min) strength workouts, boot camp classes, personal trainer sessions and so forth cause prolonged stress hormones in the bloodstream and elevated hunger. You crank out that awesome morning workout, burn a ton of calories (hoping to help with weight loss) and then find yourself pounding a pint of ice cream and evening due to the depleting effect of the workout. Hard to believe but its better to get in and get out quickly with the intensity sessions. 

Natural Appetite: Finally, the other error we see often is people having this primal 'license to kill ' where they eat high quantities of food because the food is Primal approved so its 'okay' to pig out. Man you should see the group at our PrimalCon retreats!! they inhale TONS of delicious food, 5-foot tall women with plates piled high enough to make the football team proud. As the book suggests, macadamia nuts are a 'great primal snack' so are sardines and so forth. But you can also eat these snacks off your butt as Mark likes to say. 

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If you have made great progress but wanna drop 10 more pounds you can do it in about 3 months time. So you will send me another email in a few months saying, 'hey Brad i did it, check out my 6 pack, photo attached', but this result will require some pretty sincere effort to really really really align your appetite with your intake. You eat only when hungry and finish when you are satified. Not 'full' but simply satisfied. Modern humans rarely behave this way. We eat for social reasons and we pig out on good food. 

Remember though, Primal aligned eating with low insulin producing dietary habits will enable you to easily maintain a desired body composition for the rest of your life. However getting down into your desired summer bathing suit zone is going to take some extra effort for 8 weeks. 

All this commentary should be taken in the context that a physician consultation is important for any eating or exercise program, especially when some foo on email tells you to sprint like crazy! Must be in optimal physical condition to enact this strategy. 

Primal Endurance Book is Here

Hey readers the book Primal Endurance is out and getting some good attention in the primal community as well as the endurance community. This book represents Mark Sisson and I coming full circle and bringing the primal message to the endurance world we have so much history with.

Our message is to slow down, chill out, pursue a balanced and intuitive approach, and eliminate carb dependency in favor of becoming fat-adapted. Endurance sports are extremely popular today, but the prevailing approach is overly stressful and leads to burnout and excess body fat. This book provides an attractive solution to the problem, allowing you to go faster, lose excess body fat, have more fun, and spend less time training!

PROMO

• Trailrunner Nation podcast. We went deep into slowing down to go faster, how the goal-oriented, driven mindset of endurance athletes can get them into trouble, and remembering how I became the King of the Desert with a blissfully intuitive and free-wheeling approach.
• Here is a MarksDailyApple blog post detailing the book topics. 
• Here is a nice blurb in Lava Magazine about the 7 Habits of highly effective Primal Endurance athletes.
• The Primal Endurance podcast has a series of shows where I provide detailed commentary on the content of each chapter in the book, including the 115 Things You Need to Know as a Primal Endurance athlete
• Amazon.com Hot New Releases in Exercise&Fitness: Primal Endurance various formats ranked #1, #4, and #5 in early Feb, 2016.

Speedgolf World Championships Update

2015 World Speedgolf Championships

I recently returned from the 2015 World Professional Speedgolf Championships where I placed 20th, matching my result from 2014. The event was a 36-hole competition at the Glen Club outside Chicago, IL. I shot 86 in 54 minutes on day 1, and 91 in 58 minutes on day 2, for a total score of 289 and a 20th placing in the pro division. The winner Rob Hogan of Ireland shot 243 (83-42;78-40) and earned $11,550 from the total purse of $40,000. 

It was not a great performance as I struggled to keep my swing under control while running full speed. My highlight was the second nine on day 1 when I shot 38, including two under for the final five holes. It tied the best score of the day for the back nine among all pros. If you're good at addition you'll realize that I shot 48 on the front nine that day with four lost balls. Everyone struggled in the 22mph wind, but gee I guess my ball ignored the wind on the back nine...

At 50, I was the second oldest in the pro field and these young guys are very fast and great players. I'm already practicing for next year. I took 20th last year as well in the pro division at Bandon Dunes, OR. Here is the Sacramento Bee article about my 2014 participation, 18 years after my last pro event.

 

36th and final hole on Tues, hence the smile..

Hanging with Olympic silver medalist 1500m runner Nick Willis of New Zealand, also a top Speedgolfer in his spare time. 

Here's the amazing Rob Hogan of Ireland, the world's top Speedgolfer. He is a full-time competitor, training like a marathon runner and a professional golfer at his home in Galway, Ireland.

More Speedgolf

Here is my viral YouTube sensation: Introduction to Speedgolf

Speedgolf revolutionizes the traditional sport by introducing the element of speed, endurance, quick reaction, and shot creativity into the slowest-paced of all sports. In Speedgolf, your score is comprised of the number of minutes spent on the course plus the number of strokes taken (similar to the winter olympic sport of biathlon - shooting and xc skiing).

• To get a sense of the sport, check out this high speed 4 min video of world record holder Christopher Smith going 4-under in 53 min at Bandon Dunes
• You can read this article from world champion Christopher Smith about how to implement the zen concepts of Speed Golf without having to run breakneck around the course.

History of Speedgolf
My first exposure to Speedgolf was when Olympic middle distance runner and recreational golfer Steve Scott set a Guinness World Record for playing a round of golf in 27 minutes, shooting 103 back in the early 80s. In 1985, my mother bet me $50 that I couldn't finish 9 holes in under 30 minutes. I finished the nine in 17 minutes and change and was flabbergasted to notice that I played as good or better than normal golf when I was running full speed through the course--in the zone!

Years later, endurance sports publishing guru Bob Babbitt organized a circuit of Southern California tournaments where we raced thru the course, and had caddies in golf carts providing all of our clubs on demand. I placed 8th in the 1996 World Extreme Golf Championships in San Diego, shooting 80 in 40 minutes for a 120. The sport had Red Bull sponsorship and coverage on ESPN as an attempt to become the next cool extreme sport but it kind of fizzled out.

Forwarding to 2012 or so and a group based in Oregon (Speed Golf International) brought the sport back big time! Oh man this was exciting for me because I was just returning to golf in 2013 after a 10-year run dominating youth athletes while coaching them in soccer, basketball and track (then they grew up and I was forced into the stands to cheer). I read about and watched great athletes like Christopher Smith and Rob Hogan, and practiced hard for a full year to join the elite players at the 2014 championships in Bandon Dunes. Speedgolf is a great sport because it doesn't take much time to play. I visit courses in the final hour before darkness when there are no other players out there, and zip around 9 holes in 30 or 45 minutes, then return home for dinner!

Kearns Golf
I've been golfing since age 4. My father, Dr. Walter Kearns, is the world's greatest golfer over age 90 and has had an amazing competitive career spanning eight decades, including participating in the US Amateur and US Senior amateur. Check out his website and marvel at stuff like eleven hole-in-ones, including seven accomplished in a five-year span after turning 80! My brother Wally is a top amateur player and former California State Amateur champion in his low handicap flite. My nephew Zachary Kearns plays with Capo Valley High School and does trick shots. Cousin Chris Kearns was the Wisconsin State Junior Champion and regular par player. Brother Jeff Kearns had a hole-in-one on Thanksgiving, 2014, joining a populous Kearns hole-in-one club (Marie, Gail, Wally, Walter, Jeff, and numerous cousins) that I have yet to join. 

Living to 123! - YouTube Videos

I just started a new YouTube channel called Living to 123!, with good suggested workouts and inspirational athletic challenges. Here's a few:

400-meter time trial: My second attempt in September, a little slower than the first at 60.18 seconds!

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Water Legs Ab Workout: This is the toughest and most effective ab workout I've discovered. A few seconds of effort on these is the same as doing 100 sit-ups!

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Tony Milevsky's Fitness Playground: Living to 123! visits the amazing backyard and fitness studio filled with creative challenges. Get pumped up with this wild and crazy workout!

Doubling My Testosterone Naturally By Minimizing Workout Stress

I returned to actual endurance training in early 2015 to prepare for professional Speedgolf competition, after ~20 years of fooling around. I limited my heart rate to 145 bpm or below for my training runs, but it was still too high for an old guy and I suffered from overtraining my May.

Dr. Phil Maffetone, author of the Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing and legendary endurance coach, suggested that his MAF formula for determining the all-important maximum aerobic heart rate would deliver a more accurate value than calculating a percentage of maximum heart rate--especially for me because I have a higher than predicted max heart rate for a 50-year-old due to my athletic background.

Maffetone formula is 180-age, so I started running at 130 bpm. This is extremely slow and pretty frustrating to have to slow to a walk during an already slow run, or walk up hills instead of jog. After months of devoted effort and limiting heart rate however, my energy and general health improved greatly, as did my fitness. I filmed this video because I was particularly pleased to notice running along at a decent pace with a heart rate of only 123!

Many endurance athletes have trouble slowing down the pace of their workouts, especially to the extremely low intensity that 180-age dictates. In my case, the benefits of my aerobic base building have been validated not only by steady improvement on the trails, but in my blood values.

In April, in the midst of my chronic training patterns, my all-important testosterone values were 686 serum and 6.8 free-testosterone. 6.8 drew a low flag as clinically hypotestosteronemia! Not cool! In October, my values were 1,013 serum and 14.7 free-testosterone. For reference, during my professional triathlon career I ranged from 200-300 on serum testosterone. Even during my supposed peak hormonal years of my 20s, the extreme training and transcontinental travel suppressed my testosterone and in turn elevated stress hormones like cortisol that antagonize testosterone. Delivering a 1,000 serum level is legit for a high school dude, forget about a 50-year-old!

Bottom line: SLOWING DOWN will help you improve as an endurance athlete, it will help protect against overtraining and burnout, and it will optimize your hormones so you experience an anti-aging effect instead of accelerated aging that comes from chronic cardio training. These topics are some of the central elements of Primal Endurance, which is releasing in January to hopefully revolutionize the world of endurance training and help athletes following the conventional chronic approach embrace Primal Blueprint principles!

How To Retire at 30

Note: Just discovered this in my archives - it's ~15 years old. I worked on it for a long time, super hard with back n forth edits - I was trying to get it into Men's Fitness where you earn a few grand for a short article, but it never made it in. So it makes the blog instead!

How To Retire At 30

By Brad Kearns

My first real job after college graduation was as a lowly staff auditor for the world’s largest accounting firm. Ten years later, I was retired. Not as a big shot CPA, but as a professional triathlete. What was it like to trade security, salary, and a business suit for a bathing suit? Well, when I went fast, it was great. I got to travel around the world and stay in beautiful resorts for free. There was substantial prize money and notoriety for winning races. Companies actually paid me to use their cool stuff. I could scoff at my miserable peers, slaving away for corporate America, making less money in a month than I made in 1 hour and 50 minutes of doing something I loved while people cheered.

Of course that was when I went fast. Sometimes I went slow. Or got disqualified from a eight hour race (that I won by 15 minutes) for running a stop sign. Or broke a pedal while leading another race. Or got sick, tired, or injured and had to watch someone else win. After nine years of piling up memories like those I realized it was time to hang it up. Of course it wasn’t that easy. I had to have the concept of the “R” word beaten into my head from all sides for me to take notice and do something about it.

Looking back, it's hard to blame myself. Winning is intoxicating; the confidence and sense of well-being I got from reaching the top of my profession clouded my view of reality. But gazing into the mirror and accepting my own athletic mortality was perhaps a more valuable lesson than anything I learned when I was victorious. When I was finally able to embrace the end of my career, I felt as ready for the real world as anyone who had slaved in it for the entire ten years I was avoiding it.

The second level of sell that kept me swimming, pedaling and running for ten years was my brief exposure to the real world after college graduation. Call me strange, but as a kid I dreamt of becoming a professional quarterback, not a Certified Public Accountant. The quarterback dream lasted until I was 12, when I got my first crack at tackle football. My 77-pound frame got crushed repeatedly in practice and rarely saw game time. My NFL dreams were soon replaced by delusions of running in the Olympics.

However deluded, I still hadn’t found anything to replace the power and allure of the career goal I’d had in some form since age seven. I decided to get my CPA, then go to law school, bribing the dream out of my consciousness with big bucks. What was I thinking? By the time I got my college diploma I had no idea. I decided to shun the CPA scene, especially after not impressing the on-campus recruiters enough to get a single job offer. I think it was those darn first impressions. I didn’t see the need to wear the strongly recommended business suit just for an interview; I’ll buy a suit after you hire me buddy!

So I sold frozen yogurt machines. More accurately, I drove for three months in heat, smog and traffic all over the Los Angeles basin trying to sell a frozen soft serve non-dairy dessert called Yodolo and the accompanying machine. Even though this was the ‘80's - the heyday of frozen yogurt - I didn’t sell a single unit. Motivation flagging, my boss set up a meeting with a star associate of his who was averaging 2.3 Yodolo sales a week. After a brilliant and inspiring pep talk, he then explained that his 2.3 sales per week at a thousand bucks a pop were barely enough to live on, due to the high cost of “babes and blow, man; the money’s gone before you know it.”

Soon after the pep talk, I bought a suit, crawled back to the accounting firms with my tail between my legs and secured the auditor position in downtown Los Angeles. I knew I was in trouble on the first day. Orientation was so boring that I could barely keep my eyes open; my fellow recruits were taking copious notes on riveting subjects like the firm’s retirement plan. Retirement plan....No, don’t go gently into that good night! I raged by getting serious with my triathlon training, waking at 5 AM to run before work and then swimming after work. As I pondered my future in gridlock traffic for two hours every day, my fantasy of a professional triathlon career appeared less and less ludicrous.

Intoxicated by 8 AM from freeway carbon monoxide, I spent workdays performing legendary tasks like photo copying for eight straight hours, double-checking a computer printout of bank account balances for 20 hours (somebody’s got to do it, he’s an auditor), and running errands for my superiors. I think the only reason that I had to wear a suit instead of a cap and overalls was that they were billing my time out at $65 per hour.

The last straw came on a Friday evening of Valentines Day. My two female superiors and I were working like crazy to finish a two-week audit job at a bank. My girlfriend arranged for a delivery of balloons to the bank, an event that distressed my bosses on seemingly too many levels. Highly motivated by sympathy, I brought them a small Valentine’s gift after lunch. One of them said, “Thanks, but bear in mind that this will have no affect whatsoever on your P-66 (employee evaluation).” The two Chips-On-Their-Shoulders and I finally finished around 9 PM. Dinner plans with my girlfriend were shot when the Chips ordered me to drop off a dozen file boxes at the firm’s downtown offices. The Chips rushed out and I was left , in the pouring rain, to stuff every inch of my car with these boxes.

The six-mile trip took 45 minutes. Our firm’s temporary parking garage was a quarter-mile away from our new offices. Each trip along the outdoor walkway to the office building left me and the cardboard boxes drenched. On my final trip, the dolly hit a bump and the boxes and contents went flying all over the puddle-filled sidewalk. Cramming everything into what was left of the rain-soaked, tattered boxes, I headed straight for the office of one of the Chips, dumped the soaking boxes and headed back out into the rain.

Monday I called my boss to give him two-weeks notice. He couldn’t schedule me for a week and a half, so when the meeting came I announced: “I’m quitting Friday.” “Friday the uh, fourth of April?” “No, Friday.”

Eight months later, as a struggling, unknown rookie pro, I upset #1-ranked duathlete (Kenny Souza) and #1 ranked triathlete in the world (Scott Molina) in the same race for my first pro victory. That and other highlights surpassed anything I had ever imagined. So did the financial, physical and emotional hardships I endured over the course of my career. Dreams may not always end up as you want them to, but that isn't the point. What’s important is to chase them with all your might.

November 1986 Desert Princess World Championship Duathlon Series race #1: No clothes, no sponsors, no competition on this particular day...