As we wrap up 2020, there’s a great deal of negativity surrounding the year we’ve just lived through, some have a positive outlook moving forward, some others–not so much… We get one shot at this and should make the best of it. For anyone anxious about the new year or depressed about last year, I strongly recommend you look into the practice of stoicism.
Stoicism isn’t something that we coach or teach directly at Ruthless, but we certainly advocate for its implementation and overall utility in high performance. In short, stoicism teaches you to focus on what can be controlled while ignoring what is outside your sphere of control.
Your health is within your sphere of control.
And with that, we’re going to wrap-up the year with a look back at some of our best performing posts of 2020. Hopefully there’s some useful tidbits of information in here which might help you take control of your health as we move forward into a new year and a new reset.
Since these posts have gotten so much traction this year, I imagine there is something useful for you within. I’d love to hear from you about your favorite piece on this list or something that you might like to learn more about so I can better curate future posts for the site.
Our Most Popular Posts of 2020
5. Training for a 46-Mile Speed Ascent of Utah’s Highest Peak – Part I
August was a busy month for me. I started the month with a trip to the Thousand Islands in New York and ended the month with a solo bowhunting trip into Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness. In the middle of the month, I also had a trip planned for Utah’s High Uintas mountain range.
Initially the trip was supposed to be a backcountry fishing trip, but once I realized the lake I had planned to camp at was so close to King’s Peak, the highest point in Utah, I knew I had to climb it.
This article is the first part in a two part series, which details how I trained to get from the trailhead to King’s Peak and back down.
4. Science-Based Strategies to Maximize Mental & Physical Performance – Installment 1
This post is a collection of a few ways to improve your day-to-day performance. If you’re in too much of a hurry to read this post, an easy takeaway is to make sure that you’re doing cardio on your off-days so that your sleep quality is maximized.
This article has a few other tips and tricks in it that our readers found helpful enough to make this into our fourth most popular article of the year.
3. A Comprehensive Look at Our 3 Day At-Home Swimming Dryland Program
The early 2020 shutdowns had a big impact on Ruthless and an equally big impact on our athletes and how we were able to train them. For our swimmers, particularly high school swimmers, we were very limited in our ability to get face-to-face training and had to switch largely online.
If you’re looking for an out-of-season at-home dryland program for your high school swimmer, this may be a good place to start.
The reality is that this workout was designed for individuals with no equipment, so any equipment you have is an advantage. Consider this a jumping-off point for building your own program, or you can contact us directly to build a custom dryland program today.
2. 5 Sleep Enhancement Strategies You Can Use Tonight
The fact that this article was so popular is a testament to the importance of sleep. Individuals interested in maximizing their performance are quickly coming around to lengthier, higher quality sleep than in the days of old where type-a personalities were busy grinding and hustling until 3 AM and then only getting 2-3 hours of sleep.
Less sleep equals bad decision making. Bad decision making is the antithesis of high performance. This article will help build your sleep so you can be ready to go when you’re awake.
As an extension of this article, I’m eliminating coffee from my life for the month of January (2021). We’ll see how that little experiment goes, but with a half-life of between 2-9 hours, I’ve probably not been completely cleared of caffeine in more than 4 years.
Read more here to find out how to maximize your sleep tonight.
1. 3 Strategies for Building a More Resilient Immune System
Crazy to think that an article about immune health should be so popular during a pandemic. I only wish that our government officials took health and wellness as seriously as our readership base does because we’d have a healthier population, less prone to illness, and faster to recover from any disease which they may develop.
Health and immune function should almost be looked at as synonymous. Maximizing one nearly always maximizes the other. There is a slight divergence between these two against performance (consider weight cuts for sport), but health is going to bring about the changes that will ultimately make your 2021 your best year yet.
The 2020 Wrap-Up
That’s all folks. 2020 has started with some great performances from our swimming roster; the formation of the Human Advancement Podcast (with Season 2 launching January 4, 2021); the opening of the Ruthless Performance Mobility & Fitness Studio; the launch of our new Expedition 118 project, comprised of a new paddleboarding world-record attempt plus add in a goal of raising $500,000 for clean water initiatives.
Make 2021 your year. Start small and build on your successes.
