Fitness For The Crypto Degens (People Who Work Behind a Computer All Day)

Highly Effective Methods to Remain Highly Effective

This is going to be a crossover post—many of you know I am extremely active in crypto. It is probably my second area of expertise outside of Health and Fitness.

Many of you are like me and spend hours a day looking at your computer, doing various crypto related tasks—I know I am personally behind my computer 12+ hours a day.

This post isn’t actually solely for crypto people, but anyone who spends hours a day behind a computer screen and wants to both optimize fitness and work performance and productivity. You also want to avoid burning out, which is extremely easy when you live life this way.

We’re going to focus on a few key points here:

• Posture

• Activity levels

• Cognitive Performance

• Avoiding Burn Out

These will be the most important aspects of your health and fitness you need to focus on to ensure you are staying both healthy and are at peak performance.

Posture

Posture is huge as it impacts many aspects of our life, from how attractive we look, digestion, and even testosterone levels.

Sitting down behind a computer all day affects our posture very negatively and can give us a very hunched over neck-forward look that quite frankly looks super beta.

We have a few things we have to do:

1. Be cognizant of this and focus on sitting with good posture.

2. If our posture is poor, we need to remedy this and correct it.

3. When we correct it, refer back to point 1 so this is a recurring solution.

What is good posture?

Simply put you are sitting straight up, chest up, shoulders back, and your neck should be neutral, not leaning forward creating “text neck”.

Another option is to have a standing desk. I personally don’t as I don’t want to stand for hours on end during the day, but many find this to be beneficial—plus it can help burn some additional calories during the day.

The same general principles apply—you can have poor posture while standing, so we again have to be cognizant of this.

Now what do we do if you have poor posture?

We’re going to need to do some postural exercises that remedy this.

Generally, “Pull” exercises in the gym do a fantastic job at forcing us to correct our posture, but this isn’t always enough.

There are very easy posture exercises you can do while sitting:

Simply put your hands straight up in the sky like you’re trying to grab something slightly behind your head. Look straight up in the sky and let your body “extend”.

Repeat this 5 times and hold for 10-20 seconds. If you can do this 3-5x a day while you’re working, you will immensely help correct your sitting posture.

Another great exercise you can do right now while sitting is to interlace your fingers behind your head and open up your shoulders. Try to bring your elbows back as far as they will go and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 5-10 times. Again do this 3-5x a day.

There are plenty of other postural exercises you can do—there will be an entire post about this on the paid Substack in the future, but these basic ones can help immensely.

Some people use a harness under their clothes that force you into good posture—this can be helpful for some, but I’d rather address the issue at its core and fix the underlying issue.

A good, ergonomic office chair can also be your saving grace. Office chairs and your bed are two places you should never skimp out on your purchase—they are more than likely the two things you will be using the most in your life.

The key takeaway is posture has to be something you’re cognizant of; otherwise, it’s way too easy for the body to revert back to bad posture as it’s easier to do than good posture.

Activity Levels

You have to be exercising. You can make all the money in the world—without your health it is all pointless. Being fit is also going to allow you to work and focus longer—you will be able to maintain higher performance for longer periods.

The first and easiest thing to focus on is maintaining optimal non-exercise activity levels, and the easiest way to do this is tracking your steps count.

10,000 steps is the golden number to ensure you’re being active enough in your day-to-day life. It’s also extremely easy to track as most of us have a phone that will do this automatically, and we keep them on us 24/7.

Personally, I find waking up and going for a 20-30 minute walk is a great way to get the day started, so much that my first post ever was about it: LINK.

During the work day, every 90-120 minutes, go for a 10-20 minute walk. This will help ensure you’re active and keep your brain fresh and stress levels down.

The next step is getting into the gym. At a minimum you need to be lifting 3 days a week. I recommend 3-5 days a week for weight lifting (if you can go anymore than 5 days you’re not working out hard enough).

I have 3 programs I recommend for this: Upper/Lower, Push Pull Legs (most popular), and Full-Body.

The next major thing we need to focus is cardio. Everyone hates cardio and some will even rationalize that they don’t need it.

The truth is, if you want optimal health, you must do cardio.

This does not need to be anything crazy, just at a minimum 3 days a week for 20 minutes, getting your heart rate at least into the Zone 2 heart rate zone. Again, there is another fantastic post on this on the paid substack here.

If you can do all of this, you will be in the top 1% in terms of overall fitness and you will feel absolutely incredible and be MUCH more productive as a result.

Cognitive Performance

This is also everyone’s favorite part because we’re going to get into supplements. We have multiple compounds and supplements that can improve our brain power, naturally. We will not get into prescription drugs or any unhealthy grey area supplements.

Nootropics are a type of supplement that can improve cognitive activity. There are several I like that work very well:

I’m directly copy pasta from my Supplements 101 Guide

Bovine Adrenal Extract: 200mg

Adrenal extract of a bovine (probably an Ox), can help reduce adrenal stress and improve function, lower cortisol, your stress hormone, and make you better suited to deal with stress. 

Cafeine: 150-300mg

As listed above in the performance section, caffeine gives you an extra boost of energy, focus, and wellbeing/motivation all while supporting enhanced cognitive function. 

Alpha GPC: 300mg

Known for improving focus, cognitive function, mental acuity, and memory. 

Rhodiola Rosea: 100mg

Rhodiola helps balance brain neurotransmitters without causing any kind of fatigue or drowsiness. 

Ashwagandha: 600mg 

This ingredient is huge for reducing stress and promoting mood. Ashwagandha has shown to have anti-anxiety properties, with secondary effects, namely the reduction of cortisol, that can lead to greater production of testosterone.  

L-Tyrosine: 1g

Tyrosine is personally one of my favorite ingredients for a nootropic due to it’s profound effect of increasing dopamine, your neurotransmitter that promotes motivation. It will keep you motivated, focused and elevate your mood without the overwhelming stimulant feeling commonly associated with other dopamine boosting agents. 

These supplements, in combination with a good diet, optimal activity levels, and proper sleep are highly effective. With everything, I suggest taking them for a month or two and taking a week or two off.

This bring us to our next point, Sleep.

Without proper sleep, you’re operating at a suboptimal rate and even if you take something to get a “boost” it’ll just bring you to the baseline you’d be at if you slept properly.

7-9 hours of sleep is what you should be shooting for, and you should be aiming for proper, high quality sleep.

My best advice for sleep is:

• Avoid late day caffeine usage.

• Avoid blue light exposure 60 minutes before bed.

• Have a regular sleep schedule.

• Consider sleep aids such as melatonin, L-tryptophan, and valerian root.

• A meal with carbs before bed can increase serotonin excretions and promote restfulness.

• Avoid heavy liquid intake 60 minutes before bed.

• A warm shower to promote relaxation prior to bed.

• A fan as your core temperature must drop before sleeping.

The effects of poor sleep are extremely detrimental, you cannot afford to lack in this department.

Avoiding Burnout

Burnout is real and I’ve experienced it first hand.

If you find yourself forgetting things you were just told, having trouble completing a conversation, and/or forgetting where you put something you just set down, you’re probably entering the realm of burnout.

As much as we’d like to keep going 24/7, 365, we can’t and the body will fight back (and win).

The first important thing you need to do is actually get burned out once and see where that point is for you. You need to see how far you can push before you need to dial it back so you can avoid pushing over your limit.

Once you know what your limit is, your goal—if you’re in a stage of life you need to push hard (going from NGMI to GMI)—is to flirt with this limit but never cross it.

Once you know this point, the key is to actually slow down the rate of fatigue build up so you can keep going longer before even getting close.

All of the above—the activity, supplements, sleep, etc.—are the biggest factors in avoiding this, but there are some other methods I’ve learned that help me keep going longer without burning out.

There isn’t a single day of the week I don’t work, but I give myself one day a week where I only focus on the stuff I want to do and don’t go crazy chasing new internet coins.

For me, this is Sundays, and my Sundays are sacred. I do NOT schedule anything on this day and give myself zero obligations.

A method I’ve learned from BowTiedBull is once a week I push myself to pure physical exhaustion. I do this with sprints, 20 sets of 40 meter sprints with 30 seconds rest.

Doing so takes all the oxygen from the brain and forces it to the body, forcing your brain to shut off. This ALWAYS, without fail, resets my mental state and clears my mind.

If you’re following “the way” and stacking crypto and working on your side hustle, take a week or two every so often to get a change of scenery. Go on vacation, visit a new country, get out of the same old monotonous routine you’re in.

It’s just like muscle growth, sometimes the secret to more gains is to take a week off and let your body reset. Your brain works the exact same way.

Bonus: My Crypto Strategy

I’m a very simple human: I ape into anything I think can make me rich, just kidding but kinda serious.

As an avid follower/reader of BowTiedBull, my crypto strategy is very similar. 80-90% of my purchases are ETH/BTC/LINK and the other 10-20% I degen into speculative coins, farms, and DAO’s for massive returns.

This is actually a snapshot of my current portfolio, minus some of the DeFi protocols/farms/pools that don’t show up with my Wallet Tracker.

Most of my money is in the Big 3, while OHM has grown into a giant potion as I got in early and the 8,000%+ position has blown up in proportion to my portfolio.

My strategy for investing is pretty simple—I DCA on all down days. Typically, if a coin is down 5% I will place an order. This has played out well and has kept my cost basis very low.

Not shown but about 5% of my crypto net worth is tied up in some farms on AVAX and Arbitrum. Nothing major, but enough to make a few hundred maybe even thousand or so a month.

I actually focus very little on crypto and more on building my businesses. Crypto is cool and can make you rich, but a business + crypto can create generational wealth.

My next focus will be building up my BTC bag a little more and using coins like STX to earn more yield on BTC while increasing in price (win-win).

Wrapping It Up

These are simply some highly effective methods to remain highly effective.

Each thing mentioned here will not only increase your health and fitness, but your overall performance with whatever work, business, side hustle it is you have.

The crypto posts will not be often—maybe never again unless heavily requested—but I let the crypto people in the BowTiedJungle talk about the crypto stuff.

#WAGMI

Your friend,

- BowTiedOx

DICLAIMER

This is not Legal, Medical, or Financial advice. Please consult a medical professional before starting any workout program, diet plan, or supplement protocol. These are opinions from a Cartoon Ox.