Best finds of 2022 | My year in data | Find out more about coaching | Lessons from Ben Stokes' England team
30 December 2022
Best finds of 2022
These are some of my best/most useful new finds from 2022. (All are either free or relatively low cost).
1. Cold water: started off in April with 10 secs cold shower after normal warm one, graduating up to 1-2 mins quite quickly. Now a daily thing. Also adding in lake dip whenever possible, water a balmy 14C when this pic was taken in Oct, now a properly bracing 8C...
Link to my original post on this: https://lnkd.in/eUCfdwMV
2. Estrella Galicia 0.0: my new favourite alcohol-free beer after Peroni annoyingly decided to change the formula for theirs...Estrella now available in most supermarkets, Majestic etc.
3. Weighted blanket: was highly sceptical when I read about these, but real "cocoon" effect when sleeping under and no over-heating issues. Also v popular in my house with kids when watching TV. Link to one I use below - I have the 7kg model, go lighter (5kg) if you are smaller than me...
Weighted blanket
4. Chest strap for holding phone when running: have previously used bicep bands or the equivalent of a bum bug, but found both really irritating to run with. This is a huge improvement.
Running chest strap
5. Mission Tea: a range of performance teas to boost your energy levels or mood, but with zero or v low caffeine and no sugar. My favourite blends are "Perform" and "Recovery" and I liked the products so much that I ended up investing in the company over the summer. You can use my "STEVE25" code to get a 25% discount on all purchases
https://missionuk.com/
6. Strength training - alternate months: in month 1, you do 4x 6 reps with heavier weights; month 2 = 3x 12 reps of lighter weights (but still feels hard on last few reps). Then following month you are back to the heavy ones. Makes it nice & easy to remember your workout, as well as mixing up the stimulus. Do both upper & lower body in each session. Courtesy of Andrew Huberman.
Huberman protocol
7. Breathe through your nose rather your mouth wherever possible: easier for some people than others, read "Breath" by James Nestor or have a look at Patrick McKeown's website below for more details. Both have done numerous podcasts too. Just give it a try...
Patrick McKeown
8. Groove pillow: helps to put your spine and neck in a good neutral position while you are sleeping, also really helpful for side sleepers.
Groove Pillows
If I had to pick only one, it would be the cold water.
Previous "Ballon d'Or" winners since I started this:
2021 Meditation
2020 Reformer Pilates
My year in data
(Courtesy of WHOOP, Strava and my iPhone).
- 2,535 hours of sleep, averaging just under 7 hrs per night.
- 9,763 steps per day (figure excludes activities like football & cricket where I don't have my phone on me). This used to be more like 8,000-8,500 when I was working in an office.
- Highest single step count = 30,377 on 24 March. (2x client coaching sessions done walking, plus various school drops/pick-ups on foot).
- 201 days of one alcoholic drink or more, so 164 days alcohol-free (overall ratio of 55:45). My aim for 2023 is to get greater than 50% alcohol-free.
- 15,090 active minutes logged, roughly 40 mins per day on average. Most popular activities were swimming (73x), running (56x), football (34x) and cricket (19x).
- 554km running in total, roughly one run of approx 10km per week.
- 112 days where I meditated at least once (31%). Another area to try to improve on in 2023.
I'm not sure if the old trope of "what gets measured gets managed" is still used in the world of management studies. Either way, I am strongly of the view that monitoring your habits & behaviour is a vital pre-cursor to changing & improving them.
The big step forward for me is that collecting this data requires hardly any thought or effort on my part - I get a prompt on Whoop every morning to log habits like alcohol & meditation (which takes all of 20 seconds) and the rest is recorded automatically. So there are no gaps due to me forgetting to note things down and I now have information going back at least 3 years for all of the above, and longer in some cases, to make comparisons and track progress.
Find out more about my coaching
If you are looking to make some changes to your life in 2023 - whether in your professional role or in terms of your physical & mental health - then you can get in touch with me in the following ways:
Detailed info on what my Performance Coaching is all about and how it works at www.stevedavies.coach
If you have a specific question or would like to meet up or do a call to discuss things in more detail, then email me at info@stevedavies.coach or send me a Whatsapp message on +44 7956 157172.
For new clients starting in January, the first session is half-price so now is a great time to get things started. Do please pass on to anyone you know who might benefit from working with me too.
Lessons from Ben Stokes’ England team
Hard for me to resist using cricket as a source for life lessons...
I have been thinking about exactly this ever since Ben Stokes & Brendan McCullum took charge of England team. Matthew Syed sums it up really well in The Times recently.
Matthew Syed: "This England team offer a life lesson: take more risks"
I would add "embrace change" alongside his mantra of "take more risks". It is definitely an area of my life where I have progressed significantly, probably aided by a health scare in 2016 (thankfully short-lived but frightening at the time) that made me adopt more of a "no regrets" approach to life. I now search for reasons to say "Yes" to things rather than "No", my starting point being "Why not?" rather than "Why?".
(It helps that I am much more in control of my own time compared to my old corporate life, although one could debate whether this is cause or effect of my attitudinal change.)
For football fans, there is also a great reference in the article to risk & reward: Trent AA and Kevin de Bruyne lose possession most often in the Premier League but also create the most assists - I suspect Bruno Fernandes is not far behind.
"Being unafraid to mess up...liberates them to try the sort of high-tariff passes that hurt teams when they come off". This is probably even more relevant in a sport like football where the value of a goal scored is so high in the context of each individual game.
Happy New Year and best wishes to you all for 2023
Steve