Exercise policy

I optimize my exercise to support the restfulness and effectiveness of my sleep, to increase my daytime energy and focus, and to (hopefully) stave off long term cognitive decline.

Subjectively, it feels that exercising every other day is sufficient to maintain the physical and mental wellbeing benefits of exercise. However, when I’m in the habit of exercising every day, it is relatively easy to maintain the habit. It's much more of an effortful slog when I'm booting up from a cold start after a few days of inactivity. Also, analysis on my oura data suggest exercise depresses my next-night HRV, by a small amount, but exercise after a multi-day gap has a larger effect.

For both these reasons, I aim to exercise every day. When I miss a day, I'll especially make sure to prioritize it the next day.

I typically exercise early in the day, as a break during my first work block (when I'm doing deep work independently, such as on weekends), or during my organization's lunch time.

Exercise Programming

I alternate, day by day, between cardio interval training and strength training.

Cardio Interval Training

Rationael and benefits

The most important intervention that I've found to boost my sleep quality and recovery is intense cardio. This mostly has a long term chronic effect—consistent cardio gradually boosts my night time HRV.

Very roughly, every day of intense cardio interval training depresses my nighttime HRV by about 1-1.5ms, that night. But after that short term effect, each interval session raises subsequent nighttime HRV by about 1 ms, and that effect decays with a half-life of roughly two to six weeks. So cardio interval training builds up an accumulating resource (presumably improved vagal tone and general cardiac health) that translates into higher nighttime HRV.

In addition, intense cardio training increases VO2_max, which, at least in theory, implies faster heart rate recovery after exertion. There's some hope that this faster recovery translates to rapid recovery from intense focused work. (Though that's more speculative.)

Training

I do cardio interval training approximately every other day.

Most typically, I'll do a series of short timed sprints and runs, on a treadmill. I've found it's much easier to do cardio intervals on a treadmill, instead of a bike or rowing machine, because I don't have to push myself to sprint faster—I have to sprint to keep up with the treadmill. I just have to not stop.

Using a heart-rate monitor and an interval timer, I’ll alternate exerting myself hard, keeping my HR above 175 bpm, and then slowing down and letting my heart rate fall, for a total of (usually) 4 to 5 cycles.

(The basic idea here was taken from chapter 16 of Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning, in which he claims that this kind of training boosts momentary recovery, and therefore cognitive performance.)

Targeting 175 bpm

My CIT routine is optimized so that my heart rate is at 175 bpm or above for the whole length of each of the high intensity intervals.

According to the relevant literature, the dose metric that predicts V02_max is accumulated time at 90% of at maximum heart rate.

During sprints, my heart rate regularly gets as high as 190 and my highest observed heart rate as of September 2026, is 198 bpm (on 2026-08-25). I estimate that my HR_max is 200.

90% of 200 is 180. But I typically target slightly lower than that—175 bpm (87.5% of my max)—the literature and my sleep data agree that volume dominates intensity, and doing one extra cycle at 87.5% of my max has better effects than one less cycle at 90%. This doesn't make a very big difference in practice, since my heart rate is usually at 180+ for the majority of a training session, regardless.

To target 175...

• Each cycle starts with a 45 second "ramp up" interval immediately before each high intensity interval, to allow the treadmill to get up to speed, and to push my heart rate to get above 175 bps by the time time the intense work interval starts. For these, I set the treadmill to 11.1 to 11.5 (though it's lower than that for most of the interval, as the tredmill is starting up).
• Then I move into stable intense work: I set the treadmill speed to 7 mph, for (ussually 90) seconds

7 mph is chosen to be the minimum speed at which my heart rate stays aproximately stable, neither increasing nor decreasing, on net, from the ramp up sprint.

For me, those parameters work for getting my heart rate up to 175 bps, as fast as possible, without exerting myself more than is necessary to hit that target, but I'll adjust them as needed. (For instance, I have previously used a 30, 35, and 40 second ramp up interval, at both faster and slower speeds.)

Routine

Over the course of the session, I alternate between a treadmill speed of (usually) 7 mph (a moderately demanding run) and a 2 to 2.5 mph (a brisk walk).

Warm up

I start each session with a 2 minute warm up. I set the treadmill to 11.1, and sprint until my heart rate reaches 175 bpm. As soon as I hit 175 bpm, I immediately drop the speed to 2.5 mph, until the end of the two minutes.

This is just priming. Quickly raising my heart rate like this, and then letting it fall, means that my heart rate is heightened somewhat before the first ramp up interval, so that I relibaly get up to 175 bpm by the end of that ramp up. Without the warm up, 45 seconds at 11.5 is not enough time to get my heart rate up to 175.

Cycles

Then I'll do 4 to 5 cycles of...

1. Ramp up for 45 seconds - Set the treadmill to 11.5 mph and keep pace as it speeds up. [My heart rate should be at 175 bpm by the end of this interval]
2. High intensity interval for 90 seconds - Run at 7 mph [My heart rate is typically in the 175-190 bpm range]
3. Lower intensity interval for 70 seconds - Set the treadmill to 2.5 mph and slow down correspondingly [my heart rate gradually drops down to around 140 bpm]

Most days I'll do 5 cycles. But if I'm feeling tired or less capable, I'll do only 4.

Over time, I have gradually increased the lengths of the high intensity intervals and decreased the lengths of the lower intensity interval (as well as adjusted the treadmill speeds for each interval.)

The high intensity interval used to be more intense, at around 10.6 mph. But sprints at that speed are very draining: I was doing them for 60 second intervals, and usually only doing 3 to 4 cycles. Because volume at the high end of heart rate seems to matter more than intensity, this was inefficient. My goal is to stay at close to 90% of HR for many minutes. Sprinting at a speed that pushes my heart rate far beyond that threshold, and which causes my legs to burn as my cells switch to anerobic respiration, is wasted effort.

I started with 30 seconds of HI and 120 seconds of LI. Over the course of a few months, I gradually extended the HI intervals by one second (each) at a time.

Strength training

Squats

Even when I'm doing cardio interval training every other day, if I go too many days without doing weighted squats I start to feel subtely bad in a difficult to express way—slightly antsy, slightly sick-feeling (similar to the way that I feel slightly sick after haivng spent too many hours half-engaged looking at twitter). For some reason, doing squats seems to have a notable impact on my wellbeing that no other exercise, including deadlifts, does.

So after cardio interval training, my main priority with exercise is to do weighted squats, at least once a week.

Other strength exercises

For balance, I'll work in the following lower-priority exercises:

• Pulls:
  • Pullups (weighted and unweighed)
  • Bent over barbell rows

• Presses:

  • Barbell bench press
  • Overhead barbell press

• Hinge:

  • Deadlifts [no more than 150 lb total]

Usually, I’ll only do one exercise in a given workout session, but I’ll do multiple if I’ve gotten a bit behind, or I just feel like it.

Bicep curls are my only vanity exercise. It's relatively easy to get big defined biceps, and women (on average) find them attractive, so it's the most efficient exercise for appearance.

Barbell training

For the barbell exercises, I typically alternatnate between focusing on weight and focusing on volume.

• Weight: 5 sets of 5, though some sets might have fewer reps if I'm really sweating with heavy weights.
• Volume: 3 sets of 10, at about 70% of my mesured all time max.

I generally focus on the negatives: slowly lowering the weight over the course of about 4 to 7 seconds, and then rapidly pushing up.

My goal is to increase the weight slightly, every session, even if only by 1.25 lbs each side, or to increase the number of reps or the number of sets, from the last time.

I use an interval timer to time the sets. (Otherwise I’m apt to get lazy and spend long minutes between sets, and my workout ends up taking an hour for one exercise). For heavy barbell training, those intervals are:

• 1 minute work
• 3 minutes rest.

Though in practice, I’ll finish the set before the 1 minute is up, so my rest is a bit longer than 3:00.

When a barbell exercise feels really hard, I’ll ask myself “can I do it?”, and if the answer is yes, then I do it. (A pattern I picked up from Duncan Sabien, who I reports it from David Belle).

Chinups and pullups

When I'm doing chin-ups or pull-ups, I usually do at least 40, typically in sets of around 10. If I’m doing chin-ups or pull-ups without additional weight, I’ll do more reps per set. My goal is to build up to being able to do 25 consecutive unweighted pull-ups.

I do isolated pull-up sets semi regularly, before other exercise, and throughout my workday. I can do 10 consecutive pull-ups, but I would like to be able to do 20, which is more limited on muscular endurance than on strength.

I do pull ups and chin-ups on an interval schedule of one set every 4 or 3, depending on how much weight I’ve added.

In-life running

Every time I walk somewhere (without other people), I either

1. Do a walking meditation
2. Run for at least part of the way.

I’ve set myself up to make this feasible. I’m almost always wearing sneakers, and I wear a specialized backpack that was selected to make running with my laptop comfortable. as possible.

Other

The above are my staples, but I’ll sometimes end up up physically exerting myself in other ways.

• Especially when I feel unmotivated to exercise, I'll climb up the stairs of the office that I work at three to five times, usually with a 30 lb weight vest (and if unweighted, then I'll run). The building is 13 stories tall (with a standard double story first floor), so that's 42 to 70 floors. This will typically get my heart rate up (into the 130 bpm range), but the exertion is spread out over a long period of time—it isn't as intense as sprinting or weightlifting.
• If I find myself traveling and don’t have access to a gym, I might find a ~knee-high ledge and jump on it and off it 100 times, or I might run up the stairwell of a multi-story building.
• I usually get about 9,500 steps a day, on average, mostly from walking to and from work.
• I’ve enjoyed playing Beatsaber and Blade and Sorcery in the past, with weights on my wrists to increase the exertion per move.

Exercise Habits

Pre-exercise

When I feel unmotivated, or exercise feels like a chore (which is not usually the case if I’ve been keeping to the daily habit), I’ll transition into exercise by hyperventilating or doing bellows breathing to raise my arousal.

Between Sets

Similarly, I sometimes use breathing techniques to increase my oxygen intake, or alternatively to reduce my level of arousal, between sets.

Post-exercise

After cardio interval training I'll drink water with electrolytes to rehydrate, and take a daily dose of creatine.

After strength training, I’ll take creatine and essential amino acids. (Taking Essential Amino Acids or Branch Chain Amino Acids after exercise can prevent soreness the next day.) If I’m not eating my meal for the day immediately afterwards, I’ll usually drink huel or a protein shake.