Chapters 📖

Baby Laughter 👶Armed With Thoughts of Love ❤️🩹Secret Weight-Lifting Formula 🏋🏾♂️

“In a sentimental mood …I'm within a world so heavenly…”

As Sir Duke Ellington and the great John Coltrane once were, I today am in a sentimental mood. Despite tireless production and adversity, I have found these weeks of summer to be reflective, nourishing, and resplendently gracious. My writing will reflect this note of peace. Today, you will read about the joys of children, laughter, and living without judgment.

Then, we’ll climb into the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range to stave off the chill of loneliness through the words of Ernest Hemingway.

Finally, premium subscribers will enjoy a visual anatomy crash course ensuring stronger lifts in the weight room, more robust breathing mechanics, sexual function, and more.

Enjoy the read!

-Red

Baby Laughter 😆

Instagram - @spiritualtitans

Few things supersede barriers of language, prejudice, and misunderstanding — one of those being the infectious tones of baby laughter.There must be brain wiring specifically for the sheer joy that comes from hearing it. I remember exactly the sound of my youngest sister’s laugh when she was a baby and the warmth of the smile that would travel from my belly to my face. Just like the guy in this video, I could always find a way to make her crack up, and her laugh would reinforce more output. It was a feedback loop of the most joyful degree.

Kids and babies elicit a state of perpetual delight from just having them around. They magically cheer up our moods by being their ungoverned, truest selves.

Unscarred from the weathering of life’s trials, their beings and intentions are pure.

The same way I seek natural sunlight and time outdoors to invigorate my mind and soul, I seek the therapeutic benefits of chillin’ with the youngest of the tribe. As a leader, it’s a serious advantage to see eye to eye with all ages of my community, showing them a positive example from day one. As adults, we lay the foundational soil where children are the seeds from which our flowers of prosperity shall then bloom.

I’m taking this notion further yet, as I am becoming a one-on-one mentor for an inner-city youngster through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program of NYC.

I’m thrilled to take on another mentor/leadership role, understanding that there is much for me to teach and share with these kids. Since I was an inner-city yout’ myself, the opportunity to lead the way for the future of New York is an absolute privilege and full-circle honor.

As the oldest brother and eldest of many cousins, I’ve been rearing and entertaining the little ones since I ditched my diapers. You could find me telling stories, making silly faces, playing games, and dancing with them at any given time. The youngins in my life filled me with such glee that my mom used to tell me to “think about Aly and Leanna,” my sisters, when it was time to smile for a picture. It worked every time and still does to this day.

Some people are just naturals with kids. Kids gravitate to them, and seem to jump and savor at their every word. It’s the mark of a person comfortable in their own skin and unafraid to invite others into their world, perhaps. Before iPads and algorithms, it was the favorite cousin that held the attention of developing minds.

It's my hope, for at least the sake of my own children, that someday this relic of human life will be restored to normalcy.

Hanging out with my younger family is more of a mentoring thing now that they’re older. They’re so intelligent that I hardly feel like their elder. I give them guidance and share advice, (while still making them laugh the same as when they were babies) but it blows my mind how we were once communicating entirely non-verbally. Almost literally through vibes, incoherent noises, and silly faces. I think that’s the biggest takeaway from this clip. That humans as young as babies are built to share and understand — whether it be an idea, a laugh, or even a look.

Whether they fully understand it doesn’t even matter, so long as it is communicated with a certain tone and delivery.

Everyone’s done that thing where you ask a baby something in gibberish, in a very serious tone, and the baby is like … yes.

That’s because communication isn’t always best executed through language. Truth and love shine through all prejudice, fear doubt. A smile and a laugh are universal, rising above all things spoken. Anyway, do you have baby fever yet or what?

… Armed With Thoughts of Love and Determination 🌠

The below excerpt is taken from the pages of For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.

The shared language of the human domain may be love and kindness, but loneliness is the universal emotion of nature. Armed only with our ideas and the products of kindness we posit into the world, loneliness is the eternal battle we stand firmly united against.

In this piece, the powerful sense of loneliness weighs heavy on the character in question, Robert Jordan, a valiant soldier fighting for the resistance against fascism in 20th-century Spain.

Surrounded by wilderness, uncertainty, and the billions of stars bursting in the void, Robert Jordan finds solace in what are the fruits of his labor. He must, for the love of his woman and the belief in his plans are all he has.

Robert Jordan’s character embodies several remarkable traits. While maintaining a tireless commitment to his duties, he leads with a stoic exterior and a cool head. He does not waver under the pressures of his or others’ emotions. This does not come without sentimental reflections on his actions, desires, and internal conflicts of what is within reason.

Even if just for a moment, the hero Robert Jordan displays vulnerability and affection for the woman he is devoted to protecting, the signal of a balanced man. His responsibilities may place sweat on his brow, or borrow minutes of his sleep, but they do not misdirect his intentions or his duties. For that would be to succumb to doubt, and a breaking of promise.

I can admire the character of Robert Jordan for this notion of a well-rounded man, stone-faced in the arena yet tender with the love of his people. Noble

Such as the moon, the two faces of a whole are appreciated only one at a time.

My Secret Formula(s) For Lifting More Weight 🏋🏾‍♂️

Over the years, I’ve compiled a list of various hacks and tricks I’ve found that make my lifts more intense and efficient. I’ll share these along with the science behind why they work so well, even if I only halfway understand the mechanisms.

WARNING! SERIOUS BRO SCIENCE INBOUND 🚨

Engaging Core 🐥

I really think the only thing that matters with lifting is that you maintain good form and engage your core. If your goal is to get stronger, build muscle mass, burn fat, or become overall more attuned to your body, core and form will get you there. Trust me bro. Your core is comprised of several muscle groups that effectively stabilize the rest of your body when lifting or in motion. So much of your overall strength comes from the strength and engagement of your core. Want to jump higher? Strengthen and engage your core. Want to squat more? Guess what? CORE.

What is “The Core”? 🤨

Think of your core like a box. The kind you used as a fort in childhood, or the kind cats seem to like more than the structures designed specifically for them.

Seriously, why do cats love boxes so much??

Anyway, your core works like one these boxes. You have the:Front of the Box: The Rectus Abdominis, which are the "six-pack" muscles that run vertically along the front of the abdomen. These muscles keep your spine intact and help you turn and contort in various directions.

Top of the Box: Diaphragm 🫁

The diaphragm is the main muscle responsible for breathing. That should set off several alarms in your mind — if oxygen is the currency of healthy living, the diaphragm is your money printer.It has a lot more function than that, but breathing is perhaps the most vital function to human existence. Getting it right is the key to ideal states of health and performance.

Use your belly to breathe, and do some deep breathing exercises if you want to strengthen your diaphragm.

Back of the box 🔙

The Transverse Abdominis, the deepest abdominal muscle, acts as the back of the box. It wraps around your trunk like a corset, providing stability and keeping everything held tight together.

Sides of the Box: Internal and External Obliques ➡

• Internal Obliques: Located beneath the external obliques, these muscles help with rotation and lateral flexion of the spine.
• External Obliques: These muscles lie on top of the internal obliques, aiding in twisting and bending movements. Most of us have abysmal control of our obliques.
  • This is unfortunate because mastery of the obliques can result in some serious athleticism. Being able to whip your torso around with force is a major advantage in sports like baseball, tennis, MMA, golf and football. Probably the other sports too. Definitely a big plus if you’re looking to swat that pesky mosquito buzzing around your opposite thigh.

Bruce Lee (see how it all circles back?) displays excellent abdominal integration and athleticism.

• You need oblique strength and control if you want better balance and overall posture. Everyone wants that! Bottom of the Box: Pelvic Floor ⇩Ahh, the Pelvic Floor. I could write an entire newsletter issue about this muscle group and its importance.

The bottom of the box must be strong and flexible to hold up everything inside.

• The pelvic floor muscles support the bladder, intestines, and, in women, the uterus. Control of the bladder becomes increasingly important as one ages. The pelvic floor muscles also stabilize the pelvis and hips. As the song goes,The hip bone's connected to the backbone, The back bone's connected to the shoulder bone, The shoulder bone's connected to the neck bone …Posing a strong hip and pelvic area as a critical link in overall strength flexibility and endurance. The pelvic floor muscles are also the dominant system for sexual function. In women, strong pelvic floor muscles can enhance sexual sensation and orgasm. In men, they are important for erectile function and ejaculation.The more you know!

• In Review 👓 Your core is like a box, each face necessary to overall function. If one side isn’t working, the whole thing falls apart. You get it, right?

Taking time to strengthen and engage each group yields significant benefits. Breathe, deeply!I realize that there have been a lot of words in this newsletter, so we’ll continue with this bro science-fitness-anatomy course next week. Lucky you, premium Down to Earth subscriber!

Until next time.

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