I found myself in the middle of a padel game with a few longtime Substack subscribers. Nick had been playing for a while and served as our rules official. Phil had played a few times before and, after a quick refresher, was back up to speed. For Tim and me, it was our first time, but we had both played other racquet sports before.

We were all fine sportsmen, but experience made a difference. I’m more accustomed to tennis, which usually doesn’t have a wall a few feet behind the baseline. The first time I tried to play a ball off the glass, I was lucky it didn’t careen directly into my face.

After a few games, I started to figure it out. Plenty of my attempts to use the wall still failed, but enough worked that it was worth to keep trying without being a complete liability to my team. We played a few matches with different pairings, and the games were all close. Until Tim and I were paired together. Then things went less well. Fortunately, our reservation expired saving us from further embarrassment.

Our booking ended at 8:30PM but there was a long line of people waiting to take the court. The place was packed on a Wednesday in the middle of summer. Although padel is nowhere near as popular as tennis, it has surged in recent years. When I first heard about it in 2009, I assumed it was a niche Spanish sport. Today, more than 30 million people play, mostly across Europe and South America.

(None of Nick, Phil or Tim are featured in this photo)

In North America, few people are playing padel, choosing to embrace pickleball instead, another more accessible variation of tennis.

Since most of my readers probably do not know how these sports differ, this week’s article is intended to explain the distinctions.

Keep reading to learn which racket sport is best suited for you!

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Tennis: Ever Heard of it?

Tennis originated from jeu de paume, a game played by French monks between 11th and 12th century. French speakers can guess it involved striking the ball with their hands. It gradually shifted to gloves, bats and eventually racquets. The game caught on and spread to European royals and Aristocrats. Those with a lot of free time.

Modern tennis only emerged in the late 19th century. Credited to a British army officer, Walter Clopton Wingfield, who started selling boxed lawn-tennis sets in 1873. The scoring system and the some of the other rules were revised shortly after but it wasn't until the All England Club held the first Wimbledon tournament in 1877 that there was an official unified set of rules.

Tennis can be played in singles or teams of two (doubles), using a strung racquet to hit a felt-covered “tennis” ball across a net. The ball can bounce once before it must be returned. The player serving stands behind the baseline and has two attempts to get the ball diagonally into the designated service box. A player wins the point if their opponent can’t return the ball in bounds. This is more or less the same premise of all racket spots, including padel and Pickleball.

A tennis match is best of 3 or 5 sets, of at least 6 games. A player needs to win 6 games, by at least a margin of two to take the set. A set can go to a maximum 13 games. To win a game, you need at least 4 points with a margin of victory of 2. Instead of counting to 4, for some reason points are counted as 15, 30 and 40. If both players reach 40 points, the score becomes deuce, and the players go back and fourth until somebody wins two consecutive points.

More than 100 million people play tennis every year. Roughly one-third live in the US, UK and Canada, while another third are in Asia. Most of the remaining players are concentrated in Europe and Latin America. For much of the 21st century, tennis participation grew roughly in line with the global population. That changed since the pandemic, with the worldwide player base increasing by approximately 25% between 2019 and 2024.

Beyond participation, people love to watch; professional tennis generates more than $3B per year, with over a billion spectators. Well below Football (European and American), Baseball, Basketball and Hockey, in line with F1 and more than MMA.

Tennis is an exciting game but it’s not seen as accessible given the athletic demands. Once the ball is served, you are pretty much sprinting, stopping and starting until the point is over. Anyone I know who plays regularly over the age of 30 is constantly nursing some sort of injury. The disparity in skill makes it difficult for beginners to play with more experienced players. There isn’t a handicap equivalent such as in golf. I suppose you can force the better player to wear a blindfold or consume a few alcoholic beverages, but even that might not be enough. Karsten Braasch beat Serena and Venus Williams easily after a few beers and cigarettes. Other racket sport derivatives are more accessible.

Padel: Tennis inside a glass case of emotion

A wealthy Mexican businessman wanted to build a tennis court, but didn’t have space so he needed to settle for a smaller one, with walls probably to prevent the ball landing into his neighbours yard. Eventually instead of playing around the walls, he decided to incorporate them into the game to compensate for the smaller court, giving the game an added element of strategy. It was a niche game he would play with friends until one of those pals brought the game to Spain in the early 1970s. The game spread to Argentina which saw a surge in popularity in the 80s and 90s, making it the main hub for padle outside of Spain.

Padel is played in doubles on an enclosed court measuring 20 metres long and 10 metres wide, instead of 24x11 on a tennis court. Players use a short, solid racquet with holes cut into the face instead of strings. The ball looks almost identical to a tennis ball but with less pressure causing it to travel more slowly. The serve works the same as in tennis with the only difference that the server first bounces the ball, then strikes it underhand below waist height, instead of overhead.

Beyond that the key difference is how the walls come into the play. The ball must first bounce on the opponent’s side of the court, but it can then strike the surrounding glass or fencing and remain in play. A player can allow the ball to rebound off the wall behind them before returning it, or deliberately hit the ball against their own glass to send it over the net. This changes how you hit the ball.

In tennis you are generally try to hit shots with top spin to put the ball out of your opponent's reach. In padel, those kinds of shots take harder ricochet's off the wall making them easier to return. Instead you would rather use backspin, so the ball falls into the corner eliminating any chance to play it. This subtle change along with the underhand serve reduces the advantage stronger/powerful players have in tennis.

Although it’s not as popular as tennis, the sport is growing at a staggering rate. In 2018, there were only 8 million players, by 2025, this jumped to 35 million and has plenty of room to grow. 80% of the players are in Europe and South America, with North America and Asia still largely untapped.

It’s not a surprise, the format makes it more accessible and social. The doubles format on the smaller court allows for more communication between points, and reduces the amount of running, since each player only covers half of their side of the court. The carryover from tennis, and other racket sports, make it easier for new players to quickly pickup the game without the same risk of injury. There is clearly a huge demand for this, as evidenced by similar emerging racket sports.

Pickleball: Ping-Pong for Claustrophobics

If padel is a mix of tennis and squash, pickleball is tennis mixed with ping-pong.

Pickleball was invented around the same time as padel, but in the US. It’s played on a much smaller court measuring 6 by 13 metres. The rackets are similar to paddle but the ball is made of plastic reducing the speed even further.

Like padel, the ball is served underhand, except the server does not need to bounce it first. The serve and the return must each bounce once before either team is allowed to volley. Beyond that, the basic objective is similar to tennis, padel or ping-pong: get the ball over the net and hope the other person misses.

Another key difference is that players can’t volley in the first seven feet before the net. This area is known as the kitchen. Players can enter it to return a ball after it bounces, but can’t wait inside to smash the ball out of the air. No cooking happens there.

Pickleball also has a more simple scoring system. Games are played to 11 points, and a player or team must win by two. Only the serving side can score. In doubles, both partners serve before possession passes to the opposition.

The smaller court and slower ball reduce the athletic demands even further than padel, let alone tennis. This makes pickleball ideal for older, less athletic players, or anyone looking for something more physically demanding than ping-pong without risking an injury from tennis. This is why some dismiss it as a sport for retirees, but it’s increasingly enjoyed by every age group. Former pro tennis players such as Jack Sock, Genie Bouchard and Sam Querrey have transitioned to professional Pickleball. Not to mention, former greats like Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick and others who occasionally pop in for celebrity games. They don’t help dispel the stereotypes though.

This accessibility explains why the sport’s growth has been extraordinary. In 2020, slightly more than 4 million people played pickleball across North America. By 2025, that figure reached 26 million. This is where the majority of players reside, as Pickleball isn’t as international as tennis or padel yet.

Nonetheless, each sport is surging these past few years, as people are looking to spend more time with friends hitting a ball around. The size of the court, type of racket and material of the ball are less important.

Thank you for reading this weeks article. Please let me know your thoughts by commenting below

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No. I was in an abandoned airport hangar on the outskirts of Berlin about to run 8 kilometers with eight exercise stations mixed in. I was doing this alongside my buddy with whom I could split the stations as we wanted but we both had to run the full distance.

We were about to compete in what’s called HYROX. Some people claim it’s short for Hybrid Rockstar, but thankfully that’s not been sanctioned by the organizers.

The confusion is natural. HYROX is geared towards hybrid athletes, people who can run and lift weights. The type that go to run clubs/Barry’s Bootcamp but also have a gym membership. You can usually spot a HYROX athlete from a distance. They are wearing unnecessarily expensive gear and spend as much time documenting or tracking the workout as they do completing it.

Although to an outsider this might appear cringe, you need to do some combination of this or you’re going to struggle. Although I’m skeptical of the HYROX crowd’s belief that colour coordinated sports bras and short cut 10% off their time.

In any case, there we were: a leading venture capitalist and a burgeoning Substack writer preparing to suffer for the next hour.

This is the story of how our race unfolded, what I learned from the experience, and how HYROX went from relative obscurity to a global fitness phenomenon.

Keep reading to find out.

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How The Race Went

It took us 70 minutes to complete the race, which placed us ~100th out of 300 teams that participated in the Open Doubles Race that day in Berlin. For a first time effort that’s considered good. Experience helps in races like these. We got two time penalties of one minute each, registering our official time at 1:12. The winning team did it in ~53 minutes, another 19 did it in under an hour. The difference between 50th and 100th place was a couple of minutes. Most teams did it somewhere between 1:15-1:20. A bunch couldn’t finish, due to injury or cramping.

We spent 34 minutes on the runs which put is in the middle of the field. We started off strong but I started cramping up after the 3rd station, which slowed us down considerably. My partner was finishing almost a minute faster than me on some runs, but since he had to wait it didn't matter. Our two penalties came because he crossed the run exit sign too far ahead of me. He was waiting for me in front of the entrance to the station, so we didn’t get any advantage. HYROX is full of little rules like these that we weren’t aware of.

Our 34 minutes of run time, only measures the time spent in the run zone. These aren’t actually a kilometer long, but closer to 750-800M. This is the distance between the entrance and exit signs you see as you enter or exit the Roxzone. The Roxzone is considered its own area, between the runs and the stations. The total Roxzone distance is somewhere between 250-350M. We spent 13 minutes there, which is also middle of the pack. Mostly because we stopped for water and walked for parts of it. This is a race so every second adds up fast.

We started strong on the stations. We did the 1000M Ski ERG in 3:51, the 65th best time. 1:44 for the 50M Sled Push (83rd place). Once the cramping started, we began moving slower to the stations which count towards your time. My teammate had to pick up more slack for me from the 4th station onwards, so we fell from the top quartile to closer to an average time. For most stations, the difference between top quartile and the mean is about ten seconds. Far less consequential compared to the runs and Roxzone.

This is why as much as it’s a hybrid athlete race, the key determinant of the finishing time comes down to running.

In my case I didn’t do enough of it. The three week trip to Japan 6 weeks before, was a setback, but it could have been negated. I was running at the pace I wanted on the treadmill with relative ease, but at a HYROX you aren’t just running 1KM then doing a station, before running another KM. You have to sprint an extra 100-200M before the station, then again before starting the next run. This quickly adds up and over the course of the race, you do closer to 9.5KM.

This wasn’t a case of gassing out, I spent almost the entire race in Zone 4 and barely entered Zone 5. This was a different feeling. I was never breathing super hard, this was simply my body refusing to push faster. It was smart enough to slow down to prevent cramping. Not everyone was so lucky. There were several teams collapsed along the track, with medics or teammates trying to rub out hamstring or calf cramps. Fortunately, I was able to avoid those until the very second the race ended.

If I could redo it, I would train to run for an hour straight at a slightly faster pace than what I would want to run for the HYROX. When you factor in the fatigue from the stations, you are going to run a bit slower. If the goal is to do the runs + Roxzone at an average pace of 4 mins per KM, I would train to run for an hour at 3:50.

I’m confident without cramping and better preparation, we could easily shave at least 5 minutes off our time. I’m certain we will do one again, because the HYROX environment is set up in such a way that the second you finish, you can’t wait until your next one. That’s why HYROX has achieved the scale it has so quickly.

A Brief History of HYROX

HYROX was founded in Germany by Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste in 2017. Toetzke had experience organizing sporting events such as running, cycling and triathlon races. Fürste was a former German field hockey star who won two Olympic gold medals.

They identified a gap in the fitness market. Millions of people go to the gym as their primary form of exercise, but they didn’t have a good event to compete in. Runners have marathons, cyclists had road races, weightlifters have power lifting competitions. The closest thing to a holistic fitness competition was CrossFit.

CrossFit got pretty big in the early 2010s but as a competition, it’s not accessible for most gym goers. Outside of professionals, few can master all the techniques required for the Olympic lifts and gymnastics to qualify for a CrossFit competition. Even if you are in good shape, if you draw a workout with exercises you aren’t good at, you’ll have a tough time being competitive.

HYROX eliminates the variance and luck of the draw by designing each race in the same format. The movements are comparatively less technical. There are optimizations, but anyone can push a sled or use a rowing machine with minimal instruction. Handstand pushups and backflips are harder to learn.

700 people competed in the first HYROX event in Hamburg 2018. The vision was to create something resembling a marathon. Where elite athletes or first-time amateurs can do the same workout, just in different times. Since the race format is standardized, participants across cities and seasons can compare their times.

The company’s expansion accelerated after a sports marketing group Infront made an initial investment in 2019. They would later become the majority owner in 2022. Infront is owned by China’s Wanda Group, but HYROX’s founders continue to own a stake and operate the business.

Since the ownership change, HYROX’s growth has been spectacular. They had 90K athletes compete during its 22–23 season. In 2024, this grew to 325K across 60 events. There are 100+ events and >1.5 million athletes expected for the current 25-26 season. They offer the race in several formats. You can compete as an individual or as a team, in the Pro or Open format. The difference comes down to the weight on the sled, lunges and farmer carries (we did the Open).

There is no reason to expect this growth will slow down any time soon. No matter how many HYROX events they add, most sell out months in advance. The number of HYROX specific gyms have doubled in the past year but seemingly most people still haven’t heard about it.

At its 2018 peak, somewhere between 2-5 million people participated in CrossFit, across 15,000 affiliated gyms although only ~400,000 registered for the CrossFit Open Championship. There are only around 5,000 HYROX affiliated gyms right now, but unlike CrossFit, most HYROX participants don’t train at one of these affiliates.

We are nowhere near peak HYROX. A greater percentage of participants can compete in HYROX compared to CrossFit and HYROX hasn’t come close to reaching the same culture awareness that Peak CrossFit did.

Final Observations

The fitness and fashion industries have a lot in common. New concepts can come and go quickly, and there is a lot of competition for mindshare. Both industries are massive but there’s plenty of competition. Some brands or sporting events can endure decades to centuries, whether that’s Ralph Lauren, Rolex or running a Marathon.

HYROX has been on a great run these past years, but many fitness concepts got big then ran out of steam. Do you know anyone that has done a Spartan Race or Tough Mudder lately? I’m sure a decent number of readers don’t even know what those are.

HYROX has a lot of momentum but if they want to become a mainstream sporting event staple like a Marathon or Triathlon and not a passing fad, they need to strike the right balance between accessibility and difficulty. Is HYROX trying to cater to everyone or just elite Hybrid athletes?

From a business sense, these are different customer profiles. Professional marathon runners will do multiple every year and probably get sponsored, whereas the majority of participants are amateurs who will only do one or two in their lifetime.

HYROX is appealing to both groups right now but most amateurs will eventually move on to something else. Like most direct to consumer brands, churn rates are high. The number of people fit enough to run 8KM and do 8 stations in under 90 minutes is generously only in the tens of millions. Perhaps GLP-1s and Peptides will increase these numbers.

As they eventually start to saturate their core user base, they will need to decide between providing easier, watered down versions or keeping it as something intense. Many Marathon organizers offer shorter events. Half marathons, 5 or 10KM races. You can do the half Ironman as an alternative to the full, but that still requires months of preparation.

HYROX is cool right now and its participants are pretty fit. It will be fascinating to see 5-10 years from now, if this sport will remain a staple or if it will fizzle out like many concepts before them.

In the meantime, I know I’ll definitely do at least another one, and I hope you consider doing one too.

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Pilates has somehow become known as a “girl exercise,” but it wasn’t always this way. It was created by Joseph Pilates, during World War I while he was in an internment camp. It was designed as rehabilitation for injured soldiers. So how did it turn into something associated with $200+ matching athleisure kits? Many of the movements, were almost identical to the ones I used to give to professional hockey players and MMA fighters when I was a personal trainer.

My years as an investor in the fitness industry reminded me of the similarities with fashion. New workout concepts come and go faster than Balenciaga lines. How did women steal Pilates from men? While contemplating this thought, I realize that I had leaned too far back during a core exercise and can feel myself falling off the machine. Before hitting the ground, I wondered what societal forces enabled this shift?

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What is Pilates?

Despite falling off the reformer in the middle of the class, the instructor told me that I had done very well, “for a guy”. I did not actually blackout yet, I was still her first student to fall off a machine mid-exercise. She attributed it to my diligence in taking the movements through the full range of motion. I told her I was just going Founder Mode.

Modern Pilates emphasizes core strength, alignment, flexibility, and control over your movements. There are two main types of Pilates:

1. Mat: Done on the floor, focuses on controlling your body weight.

2. Reformer: Uses a specialized machine called the reformer that has a bunch of springs and straps to add resistance to the movements.

   

What I had participated in was an advanced level fundamentals of reformer class. The other participants in the class have been doing Pilates regularly for years, some were previously involved in gymnastics or other similar sports. This class was considered one of the more difficult ones on the schedule but we all managed to get through it.

My Fitness Background

In terms of workout difficulty, I would have rated it as a 6/10. My legs were definitely shaking quite a bit at some points and some positions were difficult to hold but I was never really out of breath and only started to glisten a bit at the end. Although this was my first Pilates class, I am far from a novice when it comes to fitness.

I’ve been training at gyms consistently for 16 years and worked as a personal trainer for 6. The gym where I worked is owned and operated by a world famous strength coach with many high profile clients. This is why as a young trainer, still in university, I got to work with professional athletes.

Given my gym’s clientele, we focused on athletic or “functional” training. This means we would train athletes or general population clients in ways that would carry over to better performance in their sport or daily life. This differs from other types of training such as bodybuilding or powerlifting which primarily focus on aesthetics or lifting as much weight as possible. Functionality training would incorporate many styles of exercise, such as strength, mobility, cardio and stability.

We wouldn’t use reformer machines but the exercises we gave to our athletes were the similar to what I performed in the Pilates class. Core strength, alignment, flexibility, and control are all important for sports, so why is Pilates only for girls (mostly)?

Gender & Fitness Concepts

Fitness has been around since Ancient Greece but the modern fitness industry really only started in the 1960’s and 70’s. The gender split happened almost right away. Early gyms were more targeted towards men, exemplified by the 1977 film Pumping Iron, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. This prompted the rise of female focused fitness from Jane Fonda fitness studios and workout tapes, starting in the late 70’s.

It took until the early 1980’s before the rise of the nationwide gym chains, more closely resembling what the fitness industry looks like today. Across all fitness activities, there is higher participation from men, although certain activities are overrepresented by women. My assessment of Pilates being a girl thing is accurate, surveys show between 80-90% of Pilates participants are women. Yoga, Barre and other similar concepts also skew heavily towards women.

Anecdotally, if you ever step into the weight room of a standard commercial gym, you’ll normally see more men than women but if it’s a group fitness class, you’ll see at least as many women as men. The appeal of group fitness often extends beyond the fitness benefits. They are much more social in nature and some try to make them fun or invoke spirituality. Some going as far into becoming cults of neon halter top wearing disciples spreading the message of their lord and savior SoulCycle or CrossFit. Like most cults, it appeals to people looking for a sense of community or something to dedicate themselves to, however it is not a requirement to get fit.

Where are the men?

~60% of American men participate in youth sports growing up, which is slightly higher than 50% of women. While youth participation in sports is starting to decline it’s not as though men are against the notion of exercising in groups. So why are all the group fitness classes overrepresented with women?

Due to the popularity of Pumping Iron and the rise of bodybuilding, the dream physique throughout the 1980’s was to be like Arnold; not something you would get in a Pilates or spin class. Even if people didn’t want to compete in bodybuilding, you could see a surge of interest in people focusing on muscle hypertrophy (growth).

Eventually the male desire to be so muscular you need to walk sideways through door frames, dissipated. The new dream physique was to look more like Christian Bale in American Psycho or Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Still having muscle definition but being cut enough to fit into a medium or small t-shirt. Men’s dream body type would continue to evolve but regardless of era, if you walked into any high school or college gym, you would see men following similar workout regiments as their fathers.

(I think I just lost the attention of all my female readers)

The average men’s gym workout regime, which has barely evolved in 40 years, pretty much looks something like this:

Day 1 Push (Chest & Shoulders)

Day 2 Pull (Back & Biceps)

Day 3 Legs (Which they skip at least 50% of the time)

Day 4 Abs & Cardio

Mostly, they train the muscles they can see when looking in the mirror. Since most mirrors are chest length, they can throw on some sweatpants and skip leg day. Many have coined this the “Bro split”.

Even if aesthetics aren’t everyone’s primary goal, most men only train the sagittal plane of motion; exercises where the body only moves forward and backward. These include staple exercises: bench press, row, squats and deadlifts. Many fitness professionals that will preach that those are the only exercises that men (or women) really need. Some strength coaches might also throw in some explosive movements like box jumps or Olympic lifts to justify their hourly rate.

These are great for building strength but unless you are trapped in a Pokémon Game, you probably don’t exclusively move at 90 degree straight lines. These type of workouts ignore what is called the transversal plane; sideways or rotational movements. With the exception of darts or poker, every sport or physical activity involves the transversal plane. By not training these movements, you are asking for injuries or severely limiting your athletic potential.

This precisely why men should do Pilates. While it won’t help you look like Brad Pitt, Pilates targets smaller stabilizer muscles and emphasizes core strength which nicely compliment strength training.

Why Pilates?

I’m sure a decent number of you are probably wondering, what about Yoga? Yoga is fine but it’s more focused on flexibility and does not incorporate nearly as much strength and core training as compared to Pilates. Flexibility is important but if that is the only area of fitness you train, you are going to encounter all types of problems. Many people usually rely on Yoga or stretching whenever they are encountering pain or discomfort. This sometimes helps but often doesn’t.

The reason for this is a lack of stability. If your muscles are not stable while performing a movement, they will try to recruit other muscles or joints to help them. This can happen because of weakness or insufficient mobility. When you try to lift a heavy weight over your head, but can’t, you will lean backwards. The weight is too heavy for your main muscles, so you recruit other muscles but in doing so, your body will change its position.

This can also happen if you lack the flexibility or mobility to perform a certain movement. It’s fairly common to see people lean forward during a squat because they lack the mobility in their ankles or have tight hip flexors. This then puts additional pressure on the knees and other surrounding muscles which can eventually lead to pain and injuries.

This is why it’s important to remember this formula:

Mobility + Strength = Stability

If you have good stability, you’ll be more likely to perform the movements as intended and lower your chances of getting injured. Yoga helps with mobility, but doesn’t assist much with strength; Pilates does a better job of addressing both. If you don’t train these types of movements or positions often, they will feel very difficult and cause a lot of soreness. Speaking with other men who have done Pilates classes, they’ll claim to get as sore from a 45 minute class as lifting hundreds of pounds. This happens because they are hitting muscles that are largely dormant. Which is exactly a sign that they should be training them more often.

Concluding Remarks

In about 100 years, Pilates has transformed from a rehabilitation program for soldiers, into a a workout and lifestyle for women. Looking past the crop tops, the core principals of Pilates are still valuable in helping people go about their daily lives. The reason that men don’t do Pilates, is largely because their fitness goals are different and look at Pilates as a workout geared towards women.

The same way a woman might be discouraged to hit the weight room if she only sees men in ill fitting tank tops, I’m confident more men would be into Pilates if they didn’t see it as exclusively a girl thing. Even if group classes are not your thing, you would benefit by incorporating the some of the movements and principals of Pilates in your ever day training. This is true regardless of your gender.

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To simplify our lives, we create routines or rituals to ease the burden of our decision making. Despite its advantages, these routines become so embedded that we stop questioning its components. Over time, as much as these routines help us, they can cause more damage when they are not followed.

This pain makes us reliant on the routine, which begs the question: “Do we control the routine or does the routine control us?”

This is why on August 16th 2024, I decided to stop drinking coffee for the next month.

As an avid coffee drinker, this will be a challenge but in today’s article I will explain why this is necessary.

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The First 48

I’m two days in and currently a shell of a man. As I write this on a Saturday afternoon, I am without the 1-3 shots of espresso I would have normally consumed by now. I managed to get through the morning well enough; I walked the dog, did some work, finished the Count of Monte Cristo and got to the gym without any difficulty. It was when I had my first bite of food for the day at around noon, when the trouble started. Without the caffeine stimulant support, the insulin spike from a few empanadas almost put me to sleep.

This was a clear message from my body; “Hey idiot! If you keep eating this, there will be trouble!”. With a post lunch coffee, I would normally not have noticed the fatigue. Like any stimulant, we are temporarily changing our brains default state, which is why we are missing important cues that are body is trying to send us. Instead of acknowledging that we are low on energy, we take coffee. Can’t sleep at night? take melatonin or sleeping pills. Instead of listening to our bodies and trying to solve the problem, we are relying on an external substance to get us by. Ironically, these same substances then make it impossible to listen to our bodies, so we never fix the problem. While this is not the motivation behind my break from coffee, this is an immediate observation that explains why coffee is great but also not.

My Experience with Coffee

I have been drinking coffee for the taste and energy boost as a part of my daily routine since high school. As I started university, my consumption quickly climbed from a single morning coffee, into 2 or 3 coffees before noon, up to as many as 8 daily cups during exam time. It was not until my second or third year of university where I noticed that one or two cups of coffee no longer seemed to give me any kind of energy boost. Anything less than 350 ML (11.8 OZ) was useless.

This is when I started taking two week coffee pauses at the end of each school semester. There was nothing scientific about this; my rational was that two weeks seemed like a fair enough amount of time without caffeine in the system that it would regain its effectiveness when I started drinking it again. This largely worked but by the end of each semester I would find myself in the same position.

It was not until years later that I more closely scrutinized this practice of drinking coffee and realized that without it, I was pretty useless. In those days I was only sleeping 4-6 hours per night, while working and going to school. The reason I was low on energy and needed help was because I wasn’t sleeping enough and probably overloading my energy capacity. While I would not have described myself as an addict, I had become dependent on coffee to get through my hectic schedule. When you become dependent on something, you lose control. I had lost control.

In the years following this realization, due to work, social and educational demands my sleep schedule did not improve and although I drink less coffee, my routine has not changed much1. This would naturally prompt the question, I’ve known about this for years, why quit now? Great question intrepid reader.

Free Will and The Illusion of Choice

If you have seen the Matrix, you are undoubtedly familiar with Neo deciding between the red and blue pill. The scene presents the choice as fairly straightforward. Remain in a state of blissful ignorance (blue) or accept a painful reality (red). Neo chooses to accept reality (otherwise it would have been a very boring film).

The 3 Matrix films explore questions of free will, fate and determinism. The conclusion is open to debate but I am not alone in interpreting the Wachowskis do not believe that humans have free will. If they are correct, than our choices are meaningless, since the outcome is predetermined. I may as well just drink the coffee and let you get back on with your day…

But wait a minute! I listened to Jocko Willinik, he told me to get after it. I am now motivated and disciplined, so who cares what the Wachowski’s believed over 2 decades ago? By accepting the premise, we don’t have free will and that the outcome is decided, we make this our reality. If we at least try to exercise control, we create new potential outcomes. If you succumb to every urge or desire, then you have no free will. If you can exercise even short-term restraint or mastery of these impulses, you have agency. The more you practice resisting these urges, the easier it becomes. Don’t take my word for it, ask Andrew Huberman.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about why Discipline is Overrated. I advocated for systems. Whether you want to adhere to a system or not, beyond discipline what you need is the ability to handle discomfort and find purpose.

Comfort & Missing Purpose

“We have become so obsessed with eliminating friction, we have lost our edge.” Ben Saltiel, August 17th 2024.  

Drinking coffee and giving in to temptation is really about our inability to handle discomfort. Instead of battling through the days when we feel tired, we tell ourselves we can’t be tired today, so we need this coffee, that doughnut, that sugar filled snack. Ironically the two are linked, the less you sleep, the higher the cortisol you have, the harder it will be to resist giving in to temptation. Without sounding too much like Jocko, this is why you need to build up restraint. If you are never uncomfortable, you will live your life in fear of discomfort. If you regularly challenge yourself, you will no longer fear discomfort.

Eliminating moments of discomfort also restricts our world view. I’m confident you know people who can’t live without air conditioning. They need to keep their homes at a specific temperature, they enter their cars in their indoor garages, drive to their air conditioned offices etc. They will refuse to go places that do not have AC. Whether that’s restaurants, different cities/countries. This reliance on air conditioning meaningfully shapes the way they live their lives.

Coffee can have this same effect. Tim Ferris and Kevin Rose shared a story where a friend skipped a day of skiing he was looking forward to because he didn’t have his morning coffee. This served as his wake-up call about his consumption habits2.

If you are motivated, you don’t need coffee. If you are doing something you love, you can believe your full attention is on it. Did Allen need coffee to count cards in The Hangover? How about Frodo in Lord of the Rings? Was he whining about the lack of coffee on his way to Mordor? The truth is, if we can motivate ourselves, we don’t need any additional stimulants. The issue is that we have trouble motivating ourselves, so we need to rely on every external substance available to us. Instead of an energy boost, we need an injection of purpose. If you are 100% locked in and feel like whatever task ahead of you, is fun or consequential you won’t need additional stimuli. The trick is finding out how to do this every day3.

Beyond the other reasons I listed, there are countless shirtless bros on Youtube who will explain the potential health benefits of not drinking coffee. I am sure there are also many shirtless or shit wearing bros and ladies who will also argue why coffee is actually good for your health. In all honesty, I don’t really care.

I am quitting coffee for the next month to receive the unfiltered signals my body is trying to tell me. When I do eventually start drinking coffee again, I expect it will be much more effective again. By being able to resist having coffee for the next month, I can prove to myself that I have the will power to exercise free will. Sometimes you need to be uncomfortable or else you will need to severely limit your world to stay in a constant state of comfort. Coffee is great but if you are fully engrossed in what you are doing, you won’t need or rely on it.

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