Catalina Wine Mixer
Maximizing Performance Given Life Circumstances
Hello all. It’s been a very long time since my last post.
This year, a lot has happened. And it makes me happy to know a lot of you continue to engage given my absence. AG has always been a great creative release for me as well as a way to educate others based on my own learnings.
One of the things I love most is teaching and training, and AG gave me the ability to do that at scale.
After New Year’s, 2025, I moved cross country from my Pentagon assignment to Southern California. As many of you know, I was (am) and active duty Army officer. And am now transitioning out - finalizing the last week of my skillbridge internship at an AI startup (that also makes weapons).
Over the past 6 months, I’ve interviewed at a number of companies, done countless medical appointments, turned in army gear, acquired random documentation from 6 years in the military, moved cross country, worked a full-time in-person internship, and built a healthcare startup in my free time from 4-8am daily. The final move now is 1) get out of the army and 2) move to Dallas to work on my own startup full time.
Of course all of this is underpinned by my own health and fitness. It’s the one thing that has been consistent in this wildly uncertain time period in my life.
I wake up and walk to the beach most days and can see Catalina Island a short way from the coast. I can’t help but think of the wine mixer as a great metaphor for the culminating event I’m heading into.
Step Brothers rocks.
And so does Southern California.
I’m not going to stay here, but I have zero regrets about coming out here for the first half of the year. It was the perfect place to close out my time in the Army. And afforded me an incredible place to maintain my fitness.
And that’s the point of this post. I’ve talked in the past about priorities. Knowing your limits based on what’s going on in your life. And previously there’s never been a point where I really had to hold back on training due to life circumstances. But the sheer amount of things happening at once made it difficult to push the way I want to.
So that left me with a couple options. One, just focus on work, getting out, and starting a company. Which of course isn’t the worst option, but completely unacceptable. I NEED exercise. There is no way to go without.
So I found a way to balance. Some days, I literally didn’t have time. You have to find a way to accept that some days are just work days. But most days, I got it in. It didn’t matter if it was a 30 minute lift or a walk on the beach at 9pm. IT HAD TO HAPPEN. That’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve taken away from this.
Even in the most hectic, busy period of my life. You can always find a way and a time to train. You might not get 60 minutes a day 6 days a week - but ANYONE can get at least 30 minutes 3 times per week.
There is literally zero excuse.
And it can be so simple.
Go walk or jog for 5-10 minutes, hit a half cindy (5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 air squats AMRAP for 10 min), then close out with a 5-10 minute walk/job.
Or take normal programming and scale it back based on time allowed. Instead of 2-3 sets per movement in the gym, 1 set of 15-20 or to failure. Just keep it moving.
It’s the freaking catalina wine mixer man. You (I) don’t get to take your foot off the gas.
And that’s the last lesson I’ll leave you with. You will LOSE energy during the day when you give into the sweet kiss of “oh I’m busy I can’t work out”. It goes from 1 rest day to a week of rest days. And shortly after you’re gassed at 2pm, can’t work as much, and losing focus during the day.
Even if it’s just a couple HIIT sessions during the week.
Continuing to train will give you MORE energy throughout the week, even in a hectic life period.
It’s counterintuitive but true and proven anecdotally by countless people.
Something must be done.
As always, hit me up if you’ve got questions. Glad to be back and Happy Saturday.