Choosing a Focus
A couple of weekends ago we drove down to the Minneapolis area to our granddaughter Aubrey’s third birthday party. We arrived on Friday evening for the Saturday party.
On Saturday morning, prior to other family arriving, I went to the basement to get in my scheduled workout. It was a “workflow day” which included two separate circuits of several exercises each, with prescribed reps to complete for each exercise. There were three sets of kettlebell swings, among other things such as jumping chin-ups and sumo deadlift dumbbell high pulls.
I worked consistently with a little extra rest here and there. I cut back on the number of reps I did of some exercises. I finished the session, got showered, changed, and headed back upstairs shortly before other family guests arrived. I felt great.
Little cousins played and adults socialized. At some point after the pizza lunch and birthday cake, people headed to the park. I lingered back to chat with one of the uncles and then headed out. I wondered if I could beat the group to the park, so I largely jogged the half mile down the alternate route. I didn’t beat them.
After some basketball shooting around and a game of HORSE with my son and a friend, we headed back to the house. A couple of hours later, people left. We were staying overnight, so my wife and I headed to the backyard where the bouncy house with inflated slide was set up.
With other kids gone, our five year old grandson wanted grandpa to play on the bouncy apparatus with him. He knows grandpa can move and is a fun guy. I was a bit weary but how can I pass up that invitation?
I was first a monster, then a bad guy, then a giant python that chased Christian through the low entry passage into the bouncy area and then down the inflated slide. I did a lot of launching up over the top of the inflated slide with a twist onto my back followed by a backward head-first somersault down the slide.
At some point I ran out of gas. We had dinner, watched a movie (Little Big League), had chit chat, and went to bed.
The next day we headed back up north to Duluth. I didn’t feel any particular effects of the physically busy day before. We arrived home, I ate lunch, I went to visit my mom at the nursing home, and then did a couple of errands.
It was when I returned home after the errands and got out of the car in the driveway that it happened. A jab of low back pain. Significant stiffness and a deep ache with sharp twinges. Where the heck did that come from? I gingerly walked into the house and broke the news to my wife.
I surmised it was a sacroiliac joint problem, which I’d not experienced for more than a decade, maybe even fifteen years. Had it been the kettlebell swings? The jog to the park? The repetitive duckwalk squat-crawls through the entry passage to the bouncy house? The bouncing, twisting somersaults? Was it just too much activity overall? Was it the sitting in the car for so long when driving back home?
I had not felt any sort of pain or discomfort during any of the exercises or activity or sitting at any time. All I did was get out of the car. Sheesh! As I reflected on the busy day, I had two thoughts: too many kettlebell swings, and too many cupcakes.
Kettlebell swings have occasionally been dicey for me. I can deadlift okay but I have in the past felt kettlebell swings in that sacroilliac joint. Still, I had realized at some point in time to not go too heavy or to overdo them in regards to volume; I learned to quit while I was ahead, and I’d not had a problem for years. In fact on Saturday, they had felt pretty good. Still, maybe I’d pushed it a bit too much? Maybe I should just shelve that exercise at this point in life?
Then there were the cupcakes. Yes in addition to cake, the party had cupcakes. But, in regards to my back problem, I don’t mean cupcakes that you eat. By cupcakes I mean a workout or physical challenge of some sort. I came up with the metaphor when talking to a coworker about a GMB Fitness webinar I’d just watched.
My coworker George and I do one workout a week together and I’ve introduced him to some of the programming and concepts I adhere to. The webinar addressed, in part, priorities and goals. A key walkaway for me was the importance of having only one focus or goal at a time — strength, endurance, skill work — with perhaps a sprinkle of another activity or two, just enough to perhaps maintain status in those areas.
When talking to George I turned that principle into this: you only get one cupcake at a time, not two or three, and then maybe you get it with a few sprinkles.
In the webinar, that concept was presented in the context of exercise programming over whatever period of time. I explained to George that particularly at my age it is too easy to get ambitious by chasing more than one goal at a time since I want to make sure I can get it all in while I still can.
George is a young buck in his early forties, and that priority principle applies at any age. Multiple goals means less focus and progress in any particular area, rest-recovery challenges, and possible increased risk of injury.
I further explained that I’ve discovered I should usually discipline myself to do only one significant exercise activity a day — a strength session, a run, skill work, a taekwondo class — with only a sprinkle of a second activity at most. Otherwise, it’s too easy to not get sufficient recovery for the next day’s activity, and then not be able to give it my best, and . . . then there is also the increased risk of injury.
It was a birthday party. I had a very small piece of cake. But then I also had several cupcakes throughout the day, though not the kind you eat. Too many real cupcakes hit the belly. Too many of the kind I had apparently hit the back.
Confucius said that the man who chases two rabbits catches neither. Twenty-five hundred years later, Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, writes about the need to identify the things that are most essential at work and in life, the things that really matter most, and focus one’s effort on those in order to be truly effective; as McKeown states, “If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.”
In May 2025, I see that I must choose one cupcake. And if I want, I do get some sprinkles!
Grandpa Mode 