Basic is the Point
You don't have to exercise, just move š
Right now, Iām thinking about the chain of things that got me here. Because if youād told me fifteen years ago (when I was still racing and coaching Ironman athletes) that the thing Iād be most excited about in my late forties would be leading a slow, free, five-mile community walk on a Saturday, no clock, no race number, no podium, I wouldnāt have believed you.
I loved triathlon. It built me. And then at some point down the road I outgrew it. Or maybe it outgrew me.
However it played out, Iāve been coming back to (again and again, over years) the thing I really loved was never the racing. It was the showing up and connecting.
The early morning. The people. The body in motion. The talk that happens when youāre side by side instead of face to face.
You donāt come out of a decade of endurance training without it being in your cells. When I walk into a room now, Iām still thinking with an endurance athleteās operating system. Long view, pace yourself, donāt blow up too early, and pay attention to your breathing. The finish line isnāt the point; itās the way you show up for the next one.
That OS didnāt go away when the racing stopped. It just started running a different program.
Whatās genuinely changed, and I didnāt really feel it until a few years ago, is what I want out of my own body.
In my thirties, the target was performance. PRs. How fast. How far. How lean. How strong.
In my forties (and Iām in the later ones now) the target is maintenance. _Longevity of capability_.
Can I pick up one of my boys? Can I carry four grocery bags in one trip because I donāt feel like making two? Can I squat down and stand back up without bracing on anything? Can I walk for three hours and not have my legs or back make me pay a tax the next day?
In my fifties, I already know the target will be to extend and preserve. Keep what Iāve built. And keep it working.
The ratio will continue to invert as I age. Less intensity, more frequency. Less peak, more floor.
And the floorā¦the very ordinary, very boring floor is where most of our health actually lives. (our = the public)
What my practice looks like right now is more plain than polished. Iām getting in what I can.
Some days thatās a strength session. Some days itās a long walk. Some days itās pacing the yard on a call that doesnāt need a screen, or doing a lap around the block between meetings. Some weeks the rhythm is dialed in and I feel it; other weeks itās messier and I feel on edge with longer gaps of activity.
What Iām not doing is waiting for the perfect version of my routine to come back before I count it.
The current thing I do show up for every week (that just launched) is on Saturday mornings. I lead a five-mile community-style walk. The Board Walks in Miami. Part of a group that started in Austin and has spread to a handful of cities, and now one of the cities is here because I offered to lead and they gave me the green light. No fee. No funnel. No app. Just feet, willing people, and conversations that happen when people get curious and intentional.
Two guys showed up to the first one and we went round and round on consciousness and AI and whoās pushed us to be better, and I drove home in a better mood than Iād been in a week.
This is the shape of what Iām building and anchoring around. Irregular on the weekdays (for now), anchored on the weekends with movement, community, and contribution. All of it pointed at a version of me that I want to build well into my grandfather years.
None of this is new.
And almost all of it is backed by a mountain of boring, inconvenient science that, for reasons I still canāt fully explain, nobody is saying loud enough.
Most of the mortality benefit of movement shows up before the first hour of official āexerciseā per week. The biggest drop on the whole dose-response curve (by a lot) is from zero to a little. (Arem, 2015, JAMA Internal Medicine)
Three to four minutes a day of brisk, incidental movement: stairs, hills, and carrying heavy bags are associated with a 30 to 40 percent reduction in all-cause mortality in people who otherwise donāt exercise at all. (Stamatakis, 2022, Nature Medicine)
Breaking up prolonged sitting with brief walking breaks meaningfully lowers post-meal glucose and insulin, independent of how much you work out the rest of the week. (Buffey, 2022)
Even the 10,000-step target was never a clinical recommendation. It was a 1960s Japanese pedometer marketing campaign called Manpo-kei, which literally translates to ā10,000-step meter.ā Most of the mortality benefit plateaus somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 steps, sooner for older adults. (Paluch, 2022, Lancet Public Health)
None of this sells a device. None of it supports a subscription. None of it truly requires a wearable, a coach, or a protocol. Which is a big part of why we donāt talk about it loudly enough, because in a marketplace full of solutions, the most effective intervention is the one that nobody can figure out how to package into an ideal product or business model.
Hereās what Iām trying to do now, and Iām still figuring out the shape of it.
I want to raise the conversation and the game around basic movement.
Not CrossFit. Not Zone 2 dogma. Not VO2-max obsession. Not biohacking. Not protocols. Not peptides. Not cold-plunge discourse. Not whatever the next influencer is selling on Tuesday.
Basic. Movement. The kind that sets a baseline of your health.
Walking. Standing. Climbing some stairs. Squatting down to play on the floor with kids and standing back up without using your hands. Carrying groceries. Taking the long way. Doing a lap around the house or block instead of sitting back down. Getting off one stop early. Parking at the far end of the lot on purpose. Walking the dog, maybe twice in a day. Walking with a friend or a group of friends.
I want schools to talk about movement the way they talk about reading.
I want doctors to prescribe, and I want insurance to readily pay for it. š¤Æ
I want to see more of us on foot, more often, more of the time, and ideally together.
I spent a decade helping a small number of people do something extraordinary.
I think I want to spend the next decades helping a much larger number of people do something ordinary.
Every day. Forever.
Hawk is eight. Henry is ten. They watch me.
They see a dad who gets up and goes and moves his body and talks to strangers about moving. I hope they also see a dad who slows down, whoās in the kitchen without a screen, who plays on the floor and gets back up. A dad whose relationship to his body isnāt about how it performs in athletics but about how it shows up in everyday life.
Iām not doing this because it looks good. Iām doing this because I want to still be rocking and rolling when they have kids, and I want to be able to pick those kids up too and squat down on the floor and get back up and walk with them and not fall behind.
If youāre in Miami and you want to walk with me on a Saturday, the invitation is open. If you canāt do Saturdays, let me know. Iām always up for exploring more options to get people together for intentional movement and communing.
And if youāre reading this and canāt remember the last time you moved your body with consistent purpose, start tomorrow. Not an hour. Not a program. Aim for fourteen minutes. Thatās one percent of your day. Even if you make it five, it counts!
Start where you are.
