Which is pretty inconvenient, because when it comes to fitness and nutrition, I get asked a lot of questions.

Years ago, I would have been very confident giving answers.

Now? It depends.

What should you eat?
When should you eat?
Should you eat breakfast?
Should I cut out carbs?

It all depends. Except the carbs. You shouldn’t cut out carbs (unless you’ve been told by a Dr.).

But - Depends on what?

Your goals
Your lifestyle
Personal preference

Of course there are certainly things that matter.

If you have very specific goals, then yes, there are certain principles that you should pay attention to.

But a surprising number of the “rules” that float around about fitness and nutrition aren’t rules at all.

It’s all marketing.

• Buy this supplement stack

• Eat this particular food at this particular time

• Avoid dangerous ingredient X because it’s messing with your hormones

But, for only $97 per month, you can join my secret society where I’ll reveal all the secrets that are being kept from you to stop you from losing weight and getting healthy.

Spoiler - The secret is quite boring.

Eat reasonably well
Get enough protein
Mostly nutritious foods (lots of fruits and veggies)
Drink water
Get good sleep

Fitness isn’t much different

Get stronger by lifting relatively heavy weights a few times per week
Do some cardio to strengthen your heart

If you enjoy running, run
If you get peace from doing yoga, do yoga
If stretching makes you want to fake your own death, then there are probably other ways to move your body.

You kinda get the picture here. Do things you enjoy!

You are far more likely to continue doing them.

And then there’s parenting!

I used to think my parents knew what they were doing.

And now that I’m a parent, I realize that they were probably making it up as they went along.

Which is both comforting and slightly terrifying.

Why? Because I’m doing the same thing.

I’m trying to make the best decisions with the information I have. All while trying not to screw up too much.

And the more people ask me questions. The more I’m realizing that my first answer is often;

It depends

It used to bother me that I couldn’t give people a more definitive answer.

Now I think that’s the point.

We love putting things into neat little boxes.

This is good
That is bad
We should do this
Definitely don’t do that

But people aren’t nice little boxes.

What works beautifully for one person, might be so impractical for another.

So when someone tells you there is only one way to train, eat, practice, parent, live, work or love. And they don’t know anything about your actual life.

I’d be a little careful taking their advice.

Because the older I get, the less I know.

But I’m getting pretty good at knowing what I don’t know.

And for now, I’m ok with that.

Onward,

Mark

Parenting
Performance
Learning
Failure
Getting better

So, I thought I’d take a little break from all of that and talk about some other stuff. Stuff that at the end of the day, doesn’t matter at all. But I have strong opinions about it anyway.

Some of these are probably pretty reasonable.

Some definitely aren’t.

And I’m ok with that.

Mustard is the worst condiment

I don’t have any complicated argument for this.

I don’t need to tell you about the history of mustard, or why ketchup is superior.

I know there are different kinds of mustard. They’re all terrible.

Dijon
Honey mustard
Yellow mustard (the worst)
Whatever other mustard that has been invented.

I don’t care. They’re all mustard.

And before you send me an email explaining why your mustard is different. Just know, you won’t be changing my mind.

If you’re going to a sporting event, you wear a jersey from one of the teams playing. Or just regular clothes. Not the jersey of some other team in a different conference.

Back in the spring, we were lucky enough to go see the Montreal Canadiens take on the Buffalo Sabres in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Obviously 90% of the building wore Canadiens gear. And then there were Sabres fans that made the trip from Buffalo or were fans anyway.

But to see a few people walking around with a Toronto Maple Leafs jerseys or tthe Boston Bruins? Really?

I understand that this is completely unreasonable, and people can wear what they want. But if you’re going to a Canadiens-Sabres playoff game, you only have three options.

Canadiens gear.
Sabres gear.
Regular clothes.

That’s it.

I really don’t understand yelling at referees in kids sports.

This might be one of the few things where I don’t think I’m being unreasonable.

I’ve watched A LOT of youth sports over the past few years. And every now and then I’ll see a grown adult lose it over a call.

A missed offside.
A foul.
A ball that was clearly in, or out.

I always wonder, what do they think is going to happen next?
The ref stopping the game, coming over and saying:

“You know what? You’re right. I hadn’t considered it from that angle.”

Probably not.

These are kids.

Cheer them on, and let the refs do their jobs.

“Nice Try!”

This one bothers me more than it probably should.

Yes, sometimes it was a nice try.

But sometimes it wasn’t. And that’s ok.

I don’t think kids need every mistake turned into a compliment.

Sometimes you miss.
Sometimes you make a mistake.
And sometimes you just don’t play well.

You can acknowledge that without making the kids feel bad about themselves.

There’s a big difference between
”You’re terrible at this.”

and

“That didn’t go quite as planned, what can we do about it next time?”

I think kids can handle more honesty than we actually give them credit for.

Clothes belong in the hamper right side out

I’m not sure how this became a problem.

Every parent knows what I’m talking about.

T-Shirt inside out.
Pants inside out, with the underwear inside out but still somehow intertwined in the pants.
Socks inside out.

And none of it is IN the hamper! It’s on the floor next to it!

Somehow I’m the unreasonable one for wanting it turned back out the right way.

I don’t understand. Probably never will.

Getting the kids out the door on time should be easier.

I have no explanation for this.

I can plan training programs.
Organize nutrition protocols to help someone meet their health goals.
Hell, I’ve been to two Olympic games.

And yet getting two kids out of the house with shoes on, all of their equipment, snacks and whatever else we need for the day is one of the most difficult tasks of my life.

Where are your socks?
Did you brush your teeth?
Don’t forget your water bottle.
Ooops, forgot something upstairs.
Gotta go to the bathroom (again).

And somehow, despite doing this hundreds of times, I still believe
”Ok boys, we leave in 5 mins”

And THIS TIME, it will be different.

It never is.

AND Finally

Toilet paper hangs from over the top.

Not against the wall.

OVER. THE. TOP.

I’m not interested in the other side.

I know none of this actually matters.

Jerseys don’t matter.
Mustard doesn’t matter.
Clothes being inside out doesn’t matter.
Toilet paper doesn’t matter.

But maybe that’s the fun of all of this.

We spend so much time worrying about getting the big things right that it’s kinda nice to have a completely unnecessary opinion on something.

So those are a few of mine.

And I know you have yours!

Send them my way.

I’m always willing to reconsider.

Except about mustard. Keep that to yourself.

Onward.

Mark

Most nights were spent riding around on bikes, knocking on doors trying to round up enough people to play a game of baseball in a back field behind someone’s house.

We didn’t text.

We just kept riding around asking until we had enough to play.

We made teams based on who showed up.

Were the teams fair? Not all the time.
The rules? Kinda fair.

But there was always someone arguing over balls and strikes.

Or if a hit was fair or foul. Or if someone was safe or not.

Were we always right? Not even close.

But somehow, we always figured it out.

Looking back, those summer nights taught us about baseball. But they also taught us a lot of other things as well.

How to negotiate.
How to lose (or win) an argument.
Mostly, how to adapt.

We’d start a game, and then someone would show up a few innings in. So you’d slide them in on a team. Then someone’s younger brother or sister showed up with a few friends, so you’d include them as well.

None of those lessons were planned. They just happened because we wanted to play.

These days, as many of you know, I spend much of my summer watching my boys play whatever sports they are into. Soccer, baseball, and golf take up most of the schedule. And while I’m sitting in the stands or standing along the sidelines, it’s hard not to think back to the days when I was the one on the field.

Youth sports are different these days.

The coaching is better.
The facilities are better.
The information available to everyone is better.

I’m genuinely grateful that my boys get to learn from so many great people who are willing to give up their evenings and weekends because they care about helping the kids.

This isn’t a criticism of coaching.
If anything, this is an observation about all of us.

Parents.
Coaches.
Even people like me sitting in the stands.

Sometimes I wonder if we’ve started believing that learning always has to look structured and organized.

Every drill must have a purpose.
Every repetition must have an outcome.
Every mistake needing a correction.
Every minute productive.

Don’t worry, I understand why.

If I signed up tomorrow to coach any of my kids teams, I’m sure I’d feel the pressure to do the exact same thing.

I’d want parents to leave thinking their kids had a great practice.
I’d want every minute to feel worthwhile.
I’d want learning to look like it was happening all the time.

But the more I watch, the more I wonder if learning has ever looked this tidy.

A few weeks ago, I watched as someone asked a simple question during a training session.

They were very new to the environment.

What they needed was a place to start.

Instead they received a detailed explanation that was technically brilliant. Covering every angle and every nuance.

And when it was over, they thanked the person and walked away with absolutely no idea what to do next.

The advice wasn’t wrong. In fact it was great advice.

It just wasn’t advice for that person.

They didn’t need fourteen variables.
They needed one.

It reminded me of how easy it is to forget what day one feels like.
And I wonder if that’s what is happening in youth sports too.

Watching my boys now, I find myself hoping for more than good coaching. Yes, I hope they have great coaches that teach them well.

I hope they learn good habits. And I hope they improve.

But there is a piece of me that hopes they get an afternoon where the adults take a step back.

Where they invent games.
Argue over rules.
Try silly things and get the chance to make tons of mistakes.
And discover things on their own.

Because I have this feeling that those moments teach lessons that no practice plan ever could.

Kids deserve great coaching. By adults that care enough to teach them well.

But I also wonder if they deserve something else.

Room to discover.
A little more room to disagree.
Even more room to be bored long enough to invent something on their own.

Because some of the biggest lessons that have stayed with me over the last 40 years weren’t taught.

They were stumbled into.

Onward,

Mark

I don’t think there was anything wrong with the comment, but it got me thinking. What if he wasn’t that good at it? What if he struggled or messed up constantly? What if he walked off feeling frustrated instead of smiling?

I know I wouldn’t have stayed silent. Shifting the conversation if he had of struggled would have come naturally, I think.

Did you have fun?
What part did you enjoy the most?
What did you find hard?
What did you learn out there today?

It made me realize something. I seem to find it easier to parent the struggle than the success. When things don’t go well, it’s natural to shift away from the outcome and back toward the joy of the process.

When things do go well, it’s very easy to celebrate the outcome.

As parents I don’t think we do this intentionally.

But our kids are growing up in a world where outcome is cheered far more than anything else.

Grades
Scores
Trophies
Medals
Likes

It’s very easy right now for a young person to begin believing that being good at something is what makes them worthy of being noticed. And that scares me a little.

Watch a child pick up a hockey stick, pencil or video game controller for the first time. You’re not witnessing greatness. They mess up, drop it, or miss entirely. And then they do it again!

They don’t sit down, cross their arms and decide they aren’t “a hockey person”, or “an artist”. They have no identity tied to the outcome. It’s just a puzzle that they are trying to solve. Their failure is just the feedback telling them how to adjust their next attempt.

Somewhere along the way, something changes. We stop seeing mistakes as a part of learning. And we start seeing them as a reflection of ourselves.

One of the things I’m trying my hardest to do as a Dad is to make sure my boys know they never have to earn their place. Not with a score. Not with a medal.

We have 3 rules in our house when it comes to sports

Try Hard (I love how this could mean different things depending on the day)
Be a good teammate
Have fun

We like these rules because each one of them is within their control.

Winning isn’t.

Of course, I hope they work hard.
I hope they care.
And chase things that matter to them.

The funny thing is, I’m writing this as much for myself as I am for them. Because I still do it to myself.

A poor workout makes me question my fitness.
A bad performance can feel bigger than it should.
Slow(er) days making me feel like I didn’t do enough.

The irony here is that I can recognize this pattern in my kids much easier than I can see it in myself.

I can tell my boys that one bad game doesn’t define them.
I can say that one missed shot doesn’t change who they are.

But I’m still learning to give myself the same grace.

I wish I could say it doesn’t happen much. But it does. And I think many people can relate.

I see it everywhere, especially when taking on something new in health, fitness or our personal lives.

We don’t quit running because running is hard. We quit because every slow run feels like evidence that we are failing.

We don’t abandon a nutrition plan because eating well is impossible. We abandon it because we fall off plan for one day and tell ourselves that’s proof we can’t be consistent.

We aren’t protecting our ability. We’re protecting our identity. Spending a lifetime thinking and feeling like your value is tied to an outcome is a difficult thing to unlearn. And when we step into something where we are suddenly a little clumsy, slow, or inexperienced, our brain doesn’t just see a challenge, it sees a threat.

So what do we do? We retreat to what feels safe. We abandon the thing. The training block. The nutrition protocol. Or even quit the project. We trade that potential for long term, meaningful change for that short term comfort of what we’re already used to.

To me, this is why kids learn so quickly. They’re not more talented, or fearless. They haven’t yet confused performance with worth.

They don’t have to prove they’re capable before they begin. They simply begin.

I hope my boys can hold on to that for as long as possible.

Not because I want them to be great athletes. But because I want them to be adults who are still willing to be beginners.

Adults that can walk into a gym, learn an instrument, start a business, or try a new sport.

Because if they can do that, I don’t think they’ll ever stop learning.

And maybe that’s a lesson I need to keep reminding myself:

My value was never supposed to come from what I accomplish.

It was always supposed to come from who I am.

Onward,

Mark

A musician sitting down at a piano.
A golfer stepping up to the first tee.
A runner toeing the starting line of a race.
An athlete stepping onto the ice.

Within a matter of minutes, you know.

Not because they told you how much practice they did. Not because you saw it on social media. And not because they have all the fancy equipment.

You know because the performance reveals the preparation.

There’s no hiding on game day. You can’t fake the hundreds and thousands of hours spent practicing. Eventually, the works introduces itself.

One of the strange things about modern culture is how easily we mistake the highlight reel for everyday life.

The workout goes online. The race day personal best gets shared. And the Championship moment replayed over and over. These moments are special, and should be celebrated. But they are only a fraction of the story. The camera captures the performance; it hardly every shows the preparation.

People love to ask about the things they can see:

What program are you following?
What shoes are you wearing?
What’s your secret?

The answer is hardly ever exciting.

It’s the countless hours that nobody sees.
The days where the alarm goes off and you’d much rather hit the snooze button.
When motivation is at an all time low, but you show up anyway.

Those moments don’t get the likes online. But they are where everything is built.

Every great performance is built on a mountain of ordinary days. Ones that when placed side by side, look almost identical. Nothing special happened, except you showed up.

To me, this is the invisible season. The long stretch where progress happens beneath the surface. Most of the time with very little evidence to prove it.

I must make one thing clear though

Effort without direction is just noise. You can grind away at the wrong mechanics for years. Train hard without a plan. Or obsess over superficial habits while missing the basic fundamentals.

Don’t get me wrong here. Effort matters immensely. But you have to be pointed at the right target. The pianist has to practice the correct skills, the runner has to stress the right systems and the athlete has to understand what’s going to move the needle when it comes to performance.

The hours matter. But what happens inside those hours matter just as much.

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It’s easy to be frustrated when you compare your starting point to someone else’s finish line. But we have to take in to account the miles you don’t see.

We see the performance. We miss the preparation. And that’s ok. I believe that most of the important work in life happens without anyone watching.

My kids have taught me this more than anything else. I have a front row seat to their own invisible season. I see the daily repetitions, hear their frustrations and see the improvement that others don’t.

We can all relate to this in some way. Whether it’s with ourselves, or someone close to us. We know the story behind the moment. The hours nobody else saw.

And there’s something very special in that. Not just seeing them succeed, but understanding what it took to get there.

We all face an invisible season at some point in our lives. A time where everything feels repetitive, the results haven’t really caught up yet, and it would be very easy to wonder if any of it is moving the needle.

Remember that just because there is no visible progress, it doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Often, the most important changes take place long before anyone is watching.

You need to tell yourself to keep showing up. To continue learning and adjusting. And keep stacking those bricks.

Because eventually, there will be a moment where you will face whatever challenge you’ve been building towards.

And there will be no need for you to explain your work.

Your performance will be the one that introduces ever hour that came before it.

As my oldest son turns 12 at the end of the week, I’ve found myself doing a lot of thinking. There are certain birthdays that feel different. Maybe it’s because twelve sits right on the edge of childhood and whatever comes next. Maybe it’s because I’m realizing how quickly the years have gone by. Or maybe it’s because, as parents, birthdays have a funny way of making us look back on our own journey just as much as our kids’.

As I sat down to write this, I started making a list of things I hoped I’d taught you over the last twelve years.

I didn’t get past the second one before I realized something.

This wasn't really a list of advice. It became a chance to reflect on everything these last twelve years have taught me. Some of these are lessons I hope you've picked up along the way. Others are simply reminders I find myself coming back to over and over again.

1. The Quiet Moments Are the Heavy Lifters The firsts are memorable, but the older I get, the more I realize relationships aren’t built on highlights. They’re built in the drive home after practice, the snack-time conversations, and those five minutes before bed.

The quiet moments rarely feel important while you’re living them. Looking back, they’re the ones that shape us the most.

2. Stop Trying to Be the Perfect Dad You don’t need a perfect dad. You need a real one, who knows how to apologize, own his mistakes, and start over.

3. Listen for the Unsaid I’ve learned that the most important things are rarely said out loud. I want you to know that you don’t always have to tell me everything, but you can tell me anything. I know there will be times when you simply don’t want to talk, and I’ll always respect that space. I’ll always work to earn the trust that makes it safe for you to eventually share. When you’re ready, you can use me…. for perspective, for help, or just to get something off your chest.

4. Let Them Feel the Bump The hardest part of fatherhood is resisting the urge to clear the path. Sometimes the greatest act of love isn't preventing the fall...it’s standing close enough to catch you when you do.

5. Be Demanding, But Be Their Biggest Fan I’ll demand your best, your honesty, and your accountability. But none of that determines my pride in you. I’m in your corner before the game starts, and I’m the first one there when it’s over.

6. Actions Are the Only Message That Sticks Kids don’t remember most of our speeches. They remember what they watched us do. If I want you to value integrity, I have to live it. The example will always speak louder than the explanation.

7. Own Your Response Life will disappoint you. You will lose. You will get frustrated. That’s being human. You don’t control what happens to you, but you have total ownership over what happens next.

8. Be Comfortable Doing Your Own Thing I’ve spent most of my life choosing paths that many saw as “different.” You don’t need to fit a mold to be successful. The best path isn't always the most popular one. Be comfortable standing apart from the crowd and doing what you love, even if it doesn’t look like the road everyone else is walking.

9. Routine Creates Freedom I want you to know that routines aren’t about being caged; they’re about finding your keys. When you control where your time goes, you stop chasing chaos. Structure doesn't steal your freedom. It gives you more of it.

10. Don’t Hide the Hard Parts I hope you see me struggle. Not because I like the grind, but because I never want you to think discomfort is something to avoid. Growth is uncomfortable. That’s the point.

11. Remember: You Play Best When You’re Having Fun I’ve spent my life chasing championships, and it took me a long time to realize that my best performances rarely came from tension. They came from the moments I was smiling, laughing with teammates, and truly enjoying the game. I see the same thing in you. When you’re having fun and being a great teammate, you’re almost impossible to beat.

That smile isn’t a distraction. It’s your fuel.

12. My Bags Are Always Packed

Whether it’s a curling event...

A university move...

A first job...

Or simply a moment where you need someone beside you...

My bags are always packed.

And here’s a bonus, let’s call it lucky 13.

Your mom has been right far more than I’m comfortable admitting (please don’t tell her I wrote this). Listen to her.

Twelve years ago, I thought my job was to teach you how to become a good young man. Somewhere along the way, I realized you were quietly teaching me how to become a better man as well.

Happy birthday, buddy. Thanks for the lessons. I hope we never stop learning from each other.

Onward,

Dad (Mark)

I think all of us carry around a collection of beliefs that feel undeniably true.

• I’m not a runner.

• I’m terrible with money.

• I’m not creative.

• I’m not a leader.

The strange thing is that most of us can’t remember when an observation became an identity. Somewhere along the way, someone noticed something about us—or we noticed something about ourselves.

“He’s not athletic.” “She’s too sensitive.” “You’re not really a math person.”

None of those sentences were ever meant to define a life. But many of them did.

Imagine a young kid who doesn’t make the basketball team. Trying to soften the disappointment, the gym teacher says, “Don’t worry. There are other things you’re better at.” It was probably meant as kindness. The teacher wasn’t trying to predict that child’s future; they were simply responding to a difficult moment.

But the child heard something entirely different: “I’m not athletic.”

Twenty years later, they still believe it.

For a long time, it would have been easy to blame the teacher. But the older I get, the more I realize that most of the people who shaped our early beliefs weren’t trying to cause damage. Parents, teachers, and coaches were usually doing the best they could with the information they had. They weren’t handing down permanent diagnoses. They were reacting to the moment in front of them.

The problem is that we turned those moments into identities. And once an identity settles in, we stop questioning it. We stop testing it. Eventually, we stop participating.

I know this because I’ve done exactly the same thing.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve told myself one particular story: “I am not built for long-distance running.”

I told myself I wasn’t made for it. I told myself I didn’t enjoy it—and if I’m being honest, that part is still true. But somewhere along the way, I stopped asking whether the belief itself was actually true. I simply accepted it.

Lately, I’ve been training for HYROX, and it’s forced me to spend a lot more time running than I ever expected, or wanted to.

To be clear: I have the aerobic engine of a curler. I’m a power and speed guy, not normally known for the sustained, soul-crushing distance races. If you see me out on the road, I don’t look like a sleek, effortless gazelle. I look like a man trying to maintain a very specific, frantic pace to escape a crime I haven’t committed yet.

But somewhere during those miles, I realized something uncomfortable: I had never actually tested that belief. I had simply repeated it.

The discomfort of the run was real.

But it wasn’t proof that I couldn’t do it

It was simply proof that I was doing something new.

That question has changed more than my running. It’s made me wonder how many other parts of my identity I’ve accepted without ever putting them on trial.

We spend so much time trying to improve ourselves that we rarely stop to question the identity doing the improving. Maybe that’s the real work.

Because we are not the sum of one awkward moment in gym class, one missed opportunity, one failed business, one bad presentation, or one difficult season. We are the accumulation of every conversation, every lesson, every setback, every success, and every decision we’ve made since then.

Yet we continue defining ourselves by a sentence that may have been written decades ago. The problem is that we've confused familiarity with truth.

There is another nuance here that I think is important: intent doesn’t erase impact. A parent may have been trying to protect you. A teacher may have been trying to encourage you. A coach may have been trying to motivate you. Their intentions may have been good. In fact, they probably were.

If you’re still carrying a story that no longer serves you, it doesn’t really matter where it came from. At some point, it becomes your responsibility to question it.

Because the stories we refuse to examine eventually become the boundaries of our lives.

So here’s the question I’ve been asking myself lately:

Who wrote the first draft of the story I’m telling myself?

And more importantly...

Do they still deserve the final edit?

Because observations expire. Circumstances change. People grow. But identities have a remarkable way of sticking around long after they’ve stopped being true.

So this week, pick one sentence you’ve been repeating for years.

Ask yourself three questions.

Who wrote it?

Is it still true?

And if you heard it for the first time today...

Would you choose to believe it?

Because you're allowed to rewrite the first draft of your life.

Onward.

Mark

My son is playing in his first junior provincial golf championship, and for the first time in my life, my role has fundamentally changed.

I am not the competitor.

I am the spectator.

And honestly, I love it.

I’ve watched him compete for years—in hockey rinks, on soccer pitches, and on the baseball diamond. But golf feels different.

It’s brutally individual.

Golf gives you none of that.

When you hit a poor shot, you don’t sprint back on defence or wait for the next line change. You pick up your bag and walk toward it. Sometimes for hundreds of yards.

And in that walk, there is nowhere to hide.

No teammates to talk it through with.

No coach calling you over.

Just you, your thoughts, and whatever version of the last shot you’ve decided to carry with you.

The scorecard doesn’t care how you felt about the shot.

But the walk between shots tells you everything about who you are becoming.

That’s the part I find myself watching most closely.

Not the swing.

Not the result.

But the response.

The small things you only notice when you’ve spent enough years in competitive sport to recognize them.

The way he puts the club back in the bag after a mistake.

Whether he walks faster or slower.

Whether he looks back at the shot… or forward to the next one.

How long the frustration lingers before he resets.

Because golf doesn’t just expose your swing.

It exposes your thinking.

Maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated by it.

I’m not a golfer by nature, but I understand that internal space. I know what it feels like when your own self-talk turns on you after a mistake. I’ve written before about my own struggles with managing those reactions—how hard I’ve had to work to quiet the noise, and how I still have to work at it every single day.

When I watch him, I’m not just looking for a good score. I’m watching to see how he manages the very same internal demons I’ve spent a career fighting. I’m watching the way he holds his head after a bogey, or how he breathes before a high-pressure shot, because I know exactly how much discipline it takes to stay present. I know how quickly one moment can become a story if you let it.

And in golf, there is so much time for that story to grow.

As someone who has spent a lifetime competing, every instinct in me wants to step in.

I want to help him process it.

I want to remind him that one bad hole doesn’t define a round.

I want to tell him that confidence can return with one good swing.

I want to give him the perspective that only years of competition can provide.

But I can’t.

More importantly, I shouldn’t.

This is his tournament.

His decisions.

His lessons.

Because if I step in and take away the struggle, I also take away the growth that comes with it.

Every competitor I’ve ever admired learned resilience the same way.

Not because someone explained it to them.

Because they lived through enough difficult moments to discover it for themselves.

And that’s what I’ve realized this week.

The privilege isn’t simply watching him compete.

It’s watching him become.

I get to see the parts no one else does.

The alarm that goes off a little earlier because he wants time to warm up before his tee time.

The decision to arrive at the course early—not because anyone told him to, but because that’s the standard he’s decided to hold himself to.

I get to watch him finish his round, grab something to eat, and instead of calling it a day, ask if we can head back to the driving range.

Then, after supper, ask if we can go back again.

As a parent, there are moments when you want to say, “You’ve done enough today, bud.”

Rest.

Relax.

Take the evening off.

But it’s impossible to say no when the desire to improve isn’t coming from me.

It’s coming from him.

I know there are thousands of young athletes doing exactly the same thing.

This isn’t a story about my son being unique.

It’s simply a story about one dad who feels incredibly fortunate to witness it.

Because long after this tournament is over, I probably won’t remember every score.

I’ll remember the choices.

The discipline.

The curiosity.

The willingness to keep showing up when nobody was asking him to.

For most of my life, I believed the competition happened inside the ropes.

That’s where the pressure lived.

That’s where character was tested.

This week has reminded me that I was only seeing part of the picture.

Some of the most important moments happen away from the scorecard.

In the walk between shots.

In the decision to arrive early because being prepared matters.

In the extra bucket of balls after the round.

In asking to go back after supper because there’s still something to work on.

Those moments never make the leaderboard.

But they’re the moments that build the person who eventually does.

I don’t know where golf will take him.

Maybe this will be the biggest tournament he ever plays.

Maybe it’s just the beginning.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter.

What I’ll remember from this week won’t be his score.

It’ll be watching a young man take ownership of something that matters to him.

One day the golf clubs will be put away.

The tournaments will end.

The scorecards will get tucked away in a drawer somewhere.

But the discipline, the curiosity, the resilience, and the willingness to do the work when nobody is asking you to—that’s what lasts.

Standing outside the ropes, I’ve realized something.

The scorecard keeps track of the golf.

I’ve found myself quietly keeping score of something much bigger.

And I think that’s the real privilege of standing outside the ropes.

Onward,

Mark

Not an actual piece of paper, but a feeling or a sign. A moment when confidence finally arrives and tells them they’re ready to start the business, sign up for the race, have the difficult conversation, or chase the thing they can’t stop thinking about. The problem is that after more than forty years on the planet, I’ve never seen that permission slip arrive. I’ve only ever seen people move forward without it.

For most of my life, I assumed Olympians felt different. I assumed they were more confident, more certain, and more prepared. I imagined that by the time someone reached the highest level of their sport, they had somehow figured everything out and stepped onto the biggest stages carrying a sense of certainty the rest of us were still searching for.

Then I became one. And I discovered something surprising: most of us were still figuring it out as we went.

I’ve stood on Olympic ice, competed in national championship finals, coached hundreds of clients, and spent decades pursuing high-performance environments. And despite what people might assume, I’ve never reached a point where uncertainty completely disappeared. In fact, if I’m being honest, I still wrestle with it today. Most people know me as a curler, and that’s fair. I’ve spent a huge portion of my life chasing excellence in that sport. But I’ve also spent more than twenty years coaching in the fitness industry, studying training, nutrition, recovery, and human performance.

And yet, every time I publish a MarkMAIL on those topics, a small voice still shows up: “Who are you to be talking about this?”

It’s irrational.
It’s probably not true.
But it’s there.

What’s even stranger is that I experience the same thing in curling. You would think that after two Olympics, national championships, and decades of competition, I’d finally feel completely prepared walking into every event.

I don’t.

Before major competitions, I still find myself asking the same questions:

Did I do enough?
Should I have practiced more?
Prepared differently?
Thrown a few more rocks?

For years, I believed there would eventually be a point where those questions disappeared. A point where confidence permanently replaced uncertainty. A point where I would finally feel ready.

That point never came. And the longer I’ve been around high performers, the more I’ve realized it never came for them either.

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That’s when I started to understand something important.

Readiness is a lagging indicator.

We tend to treat confidence like a prerequisite. We assume it should arrive before action. But in reality, confidence is often the residue left behind by action.

As the Alex Hormozi quote goes,

The entrepreneur builds confidence by making the first sale. The athlete builds confidence by stepping into competition. The writer builds confidence by publishing. The coach builds confidence by coaching.

The evidence comes first. The confidence follows.

I think back to some of the training sessions that felt the heaviest—not physically, but mentally. Whether it was the weeks leading into a Brier or the middle stages of a brutal HYROX prep, I realized that if I had waited until I felt “ready” to show up, I would have spent a significant portion of my life sitting on the sidelines. The athletes, business owners, and leaders I respect most aren’t fearless. They aren’t certain.

They are simply willing to move before certainty arrives.

They’ve stopped asking, “Do I feel ready?” and started asking, “Is the next step clear?”

Those are two very different questions. One depends on emotion; the other depends on actionable data. And action has a funny way of creating the confidence we thought we needed beforehand.

Maybe that’s why the permission slip never arrives. Because nobody can hand it to you.

You earn it. One workout, one conversation, one article, and one uncomfortable step at a time.

If you’re currently waiting for the perfect moment to start something important, consider the possibility that the feeling you’re waiting for isn’t coming. Not because you’re incapable, and not because you’re unqualified. But because readiness was never meant to arrive first.

The only “ready” I’ve ever experienced is the kind that shows up in the rearview mirror.

The kind you build while you’re already moving, one rep at a time.

Onward.

Mark

It was realizing that many of my clients weren’t paying me for a workout. They were paying me for an hour where nobody needed anything from them. No emails. No employees. No kids. No decisions. Just sixty uninterrupted minutes to breathe.

It took me years to understand that.

Ironically, I stumbled into the fitness industry out of pure desperation.

Fresh out of university with a Kinesiology degree, I was aggressively applying for jobs, but there weren’t many companies willing to take a chance on a competitive curler who needed weeks at a time off to travel the world chasing an Olympic dream.

Actually, there were exactly zero.

Back then, remote work wasn’t an option. My traditional career path was dead in the water. I needed something. That’s when I walked into a local public gym and applied to be a personal trainer.

Those early days were humbling. I spent hours pacing the weight floor, awkwardly introducing myself to members, hoping someone might be interested in a training session. Looking back, I was about as good at selling personal training as the average person trying to assemble an IKEA dresser without the instructions.

It was painful. It was awkward. And it was one of the best learning experiences I’ve ever had.

Eventually, I was offered a position at a small personal training studio alongside some of the smartest coaches in the city. I jumped at the opportunity.

For the next several years, I practically lived in the gym. Twelve-hour days. Sometimes fourteen. Completely exhausted. Completely fulfilled.

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There is nothing quite like watching someone accomplish something they once believed was impossible. Sometimes it’s a physical milestone they’ve chased for years. Other times it’s watching someone completely redefine what they’re capable of. Being even a small part of that breakthrough is incredibly addictive.

Like most young trainers, I thought every session had one objective: run the program exactly as it was written. Rep for rep. Set for set. Push the client hard. Get them sweating. Get them sore. Get them results.

I thought that’s what they were paying me for.

Boy, was I wrong.

As much as I thought people were paying me for a great workout, I slowly realized that high performance has very little to do with the numbers written on a clipboard.

The workout was simply the excuse.

For some clients, I became far more than the guy counting reps. I became a sounding board.

An amateur therapist.

A strategic partner.

And occasionally, an escape room coordinator from their own life.

Here’s the part they probably never realized.

They were teaching me every bit as much as I was teaching them.

I thought I was coaching people through squats and deadlifts.

They were quietly coaching me through life.

Many of my clients were senior executives leading large organizations. Others were balancing demanding careers while raising three or four kids. Some walked into the gym carrying the weight of decisions that would affect hundreds of employees. Others had spent the day solving everyone else’s problems before finally carving out one hour for themselves.

At first, I admired their discipline. Eventually, I admired something even more.

Their boundaries.

You can’t pour into everyone else if your own tank is empty.

Some of my favorite sessions barely looked like workouts.

Most of those sessions started exactly the same way.

We’d spend a few minutes warming up. Maybe some mobility work. We’d talk about how the week had gone.

And then, somewhere along the way, you could just tell.

Today wasn’t the day we were going to chase a personal best.

The workout quietly became a conversation.

We’d mix in a few sets of push-ups. Maybe some bicep curls—because let’s be honest, everybody loves bicep curls—but mostly we’d talk.

Early in my career, I would have considered that a failed workout.

Today, I realize it was often the most important session of the week.

The goal wasn’t to maximize the workout.

The goal was to make sure they came back tomorrow.

The goal wasn’t to ignore the program.

The goal was to keep the habit alive.

The client would leave standing a little taller. Breathing a little easier. Looking lighter than when they walked in.

The workout wasn’t what they needed most that day.

The hour was.

That realization completely changed how I think about coaching.

Great coaching isn’t blindly following a spreadsheet. It isn’t squeezing one more rep out of someone who’s already carrying the emotional weight of an impossible week.

It’s learning to read the room.

It’s knowing when someone needs a push...

...and knowing when they need permission to exhale.

Performance isn’t built by ignoring the human being standing in front of you.

It’s built by understanding them.

The best coaches I’ve ever met don’t just prescribe exercise.

They create space.

Space to think.

Space to breathe.

Space to reset.

Looking back, I thought I was spending twenty years teaching people how to train.

What I was really doing was getting a front-row seat to watch resilient people navigate life.

The workouts mattered. But they were never the most important part of the hour.

So to every client who trusted me with sixty minutes of your week...

Thank you.

You came looking for a coach.

I ended up becoming the student.

Thanks for being here!

Mark

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I’ve watched the same pattern play out hundreds of times.

Someone joins a new gym and they’re all in. New shoes. New workout gear. A fresh water bottle. They don’t miss a class for weeks.

Four or five months later, they’re gone.

Not because the coach changed. Not because the workouts stopped working. Not because they stopped making progress. They leave because it stopped feeling new.

A week later they’re posting photos from another gym, convinced they simply needed a different program, a different coach, or a different challenge.

But they didn’t have a programming problem.

They had a novelty problem.

Every time you switch lanes to chase excitement, you reset the compounding clock.

And I don’t think this is a fitness problem.

I think it’s a human problem.

As a two-time Olympian, people often ask what training for the Olympics was like. I think they’re usually disappointed by my answer because most days didn’t feel extraordinary. They felt ordinary: Show up. Stretch. Throw a draw. Make an adjustment. Throw another draw. Make another adjustment. Throw another draw. Over. And. Over. Make another tiny adjustment. Go home. Come back tomorrow and repeat.

There were no television cameras, no roaring crowds, and no dramatic music playing over the speakers. Just another Tuesday morning on an empty sheet of ice. If someone randomly walked into one practice during my career, they probably would have wondered where all the excitement was. Ironically, they would have been watching the exact thing that built the championships.

Social media and Hollywood have done us a disservice. Every Rocky montage lasts three minutes—a few dramatic workouts, a little music, some sweat, the stairs, and then the credits. Real life doesn’t work like that. Real life has Tuesday. And then another Tuesday. And then fifty more.

Preparing for HYROX has reminded me of this lesson all over again. There isn't a secret workout waiting for me next week. It's another run, another sled push, another set of lunges, another row. From the outside, almost every session looks the same. But that's only because the improvements I'm chasing have become smaller. A cleaner transition. A steadier heart rate. A few seconds off a run. A little less recovery between efforts. Most people would never notice the difference. I do. The workouts aren't effective because they're constantly changing. They're effective because they aren't.

The View From the Clipboard

I’ve also seen this from the other side of the clipboard. As a coach, you can almost predict it. A new athlete joins the team or a new client walks into the gym, and the coach is energized. Every session is carefully planned, every detail matters, and everything feels fresh.

Then the relationship settles.

Without even realizing it, many coaches begin searching for something new. A different drill, a more creative workout, a fresh way to keep everyone’s attention. Not because the athlete has stopped improving, but because the coach has grown familiar with the process. They mistake their own boredom for the athlete’s need.

But the best coaches I’ve ever been around don’t chase novelty; they chase mastery. They understand athletes don’t improve because every practice is different. They improve because the fundamentals are revisited so often that they become instinct. The great coaches don't make the basics more complicated. They make athletes see more inside the basics.

Average coaches change the drill. Great coaches change the athlete’s relationship with the drill.

The same thing happens everywhere else. Businesses abandon strategies before they’ve had time to compound. People jump from productivity system to productivity system. Relationships suffer because comfort gets mistaken for stagnation. We have developed an incredibly low tolerance for familiarity.

We mistake repetition for failure. We mistake boredom for a lack of progress. But maybe boredom isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s the admission price.

From Repetition to Feedback

The longer I’ve competed, coached, and trained, the more I’ve realized something surprising: Elite performers don’t have a higher tolerance for boredom. Eventually, they stop experiencing it as boredom altogether.

• A beginner throws another draw or takes another shot; an Olympian feels a slightly cleaner release.

• A beginner runs another interval; an experienced athlete notices their breathing settle twenty seconds sooner.

• A beginner sees repetition; an expert sees feedback.

The work didn’t change. Their relationship with it did.

We spend so much of our lives looking for something that keeps us motivated. The best performers I’ve ever known do something completely different: they build lives that don’t require motivation. They trust repetition. They embrace consistency. They become fascinated by refinement. Because they understand that excellence isn’t built during extraordinary moments. It’s quietly built inside ordinary ones.

Every time you choose novelty over consistency, you reset the compounding clock.

So don’t ask yourself whether the work has become boring.

Ask yourself a better question.

Has it become familiar...

...or has it finally become effective?

Because excellence has never been built on what keeps us entertained.

It’s built on what we’re willing to repeat.

Thank for being here

Your gut says another.

Late in a championship game, with years of preparation behind us and everything on the line, the percentages all pointed toward the safe shot. The scouting reports agreed. The statistics agreed. The conventional wisdom agreed.

But standing over the stone, none of that mattered.

It’s hard to explain, but you can feel it.

You can sense subtle shifts in confidence, momentum, and body language that would never show up on a spreadsheet.

The data says Option A.

Experience says Option B.

And across sports, business, and daily training, I’ve watched this exact same tension play out everywhere.

We’ve never had more data. We’ve never had more dashboards. We’ve never had more ways to measure ourselves.

And yet many of us are becoming worse at listening to the one thing that ultimately matters:

Our own judgment.

As a two-time Olympian, I’ve spent much of my life surrounded by performance data, scouting reports, percentages, and analytics. They all matter.

But the longer I’ve competed, the more I’ve realized that the highest-pressure moments are rarely decided by information alone.

What’s fascinating is that the same mistake shows up whether you’re chasing an Olympic medal or chasing a better workout.

I’ve coached hundreds of classes at Orangetheory Fitness and taken hundreds myself. I love the environment, the energy, and the fact that members get real-time feedback throughout a workout.

I love the gamification of it.

Even people who insist they’re not competitive eventually find themselves glancing up at the screen. They start paying attention to their numbers. They start chasing Splat Points.

And that’s where things get interesting.

Take a classic power treadmill template: eight 30-second all-out sprints, each separated by a full minute of walking recovery.

The objective is simple: produce maximum speed and power during every sprint.

To do that, you need the recovery.

The walking intervals aren’t a break from the workout. They are part of the workout.

But watch what happens.

Many members refuse to walk. They jog instead. Or they keep the incline high.

Why?

Because they see their heart rate dropping into the green or blue zones and start worrying that they won’t earn enough Splat Points once the next sprint begins.

So they change the objective.

Instead of maximizing performance, they maximize the metric.

By refusing to recover, they enter the next sprint already fatigued. They can’t hit their true top-end speed. They feel like they’re working harder because their heart rate remains elevated, but they’ve quietly transformed a power workout into a mediocre cardio session.

They didn’t optimize their fitness.

They optimized their dashboard.

And the more I coach, the more I realize this has very little to do with fitness.

The Targets We Chase

If you don’t spend your mornings under orange studio lights, don’t feel detached. You are almost certainly doing the exact same thing with your calendar, your business, or your life. I’m guilty of this as well.

I wear a WHOOP band every single day. I love the insights it provides, and if I’m being honest, I can easily get lost in the endless stream of recovery scores, sleep metrics, and strain data.

The irony is that the more information we have, the easier it becomes to believe we’re in control.

Sociologists call this Goodhart’s Law: When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric.

We love tracking things because it gives us the comforting feeling that we're in control. We track our sleep scores on rings, our daily steps on watches, our productivity in neatly color-coded blocks on a screen, and our professional value in “emails cleared” or “hours logged.”

But when we outsource our self-assessment entirely to an external display, we build a remarkably fragile operating system. We begin trading the substance of our effort for the mere representation of it:

• In the Office: We treat non-stop availability as our personal Splat Point. We refuse to take quiet “recovery blocks” to think deeply or plan strategically because if we aren’t replying to messages instantly, we feel like we aren’t working. We trade high-leverage impact for the frantic appearance of activity.

• In Daily Productivity: We stack meetings back-to-back with zero breathing room because white space looks like laziness on a calendar. By 2:00 PM, our cognitive capacity is entirely spent and our execution drops off a cliff—but the dashboard looked spectacular.

• In Modern Leadership: We manage by spreadsheet percentages. We trust the software over the culture, forcing rigid, standardized metrics onto dynamic, human systems, completely overriding the nuance of the actual environment.

We think we are optimizing our performance. In reality, we are just training the screen.

When Data Meets Reality

The danger of this disconnect isn’t that data is bad. Data is a phenomenal consultant. It builds our baseline, flags our blind spots, and keeps us honest.

The danger is that we treat the data as a dictator. If the screen says we didn’t work hard enough, we feel defeated. If our wearable says we are wrecked, we hold back—even when our internal engine is ready to roar. We spend so long waiting for a digital permission slip to perform that we forget how to read our own internal governor.

But the dashboards always break down when you hit a true red line.

In high-stakes environments, the screen can’t save you. When you are leading a team through a sudden market crisis, negotiating a massive deal, or stepping up to place a bet on yourself, pacing stops being a gamified math equation.

That brings us back to the ice-level truth.

When data and intuition collide, the elite performer doesn’t look at the playbook. They look at the reality in front of them.

That internal intelligence isn’t a wild guess or a lucky flash of sentimentality.

It’s hyper-compressed pattern recognition.

It’s two decades of throwing rocks, making errors, correcting course, and surviving pressure distilled into a single, quiet gut feeling.

It’s the human margin that data can never track because it only exists in the raw, unrepeatable present moment of competition.

It’s the Ghost in the Machine.

Whether you are stepping onto a treadmill, leading a boardroom meeting, or standing over a shot to win a championship, remember the real objective.

Use the data to build your foundation.

But trust your judgment to win the game.

Because when the pressure hits its absolute peak, the dashboard turns off.

And that’s when the Ghost in the Machine shows up.

A Question for You

Where in your life are you optimizing the metric instead of the objective?

Fitness?

Business?

Parenting?

Leadership?

I’d love to hear your examples in the comments.

Thanks for being here!

Mark

They read things like: "I am a great teammate." "I am the best third in the world."

At that stage of development, those notes served a valuable purpose. They forced us to define our intentions and articulate who we wanted to become.

But as my career progressed and the stakes grew higher, I realized that intention is only the starting line. When you are staring down a critical shot with everything on the line, your brain doesn’t look at sticky notes. It audits its internal file cabinet for raw data.

As entrepreneur Alex Hormozi puts it:

"You don't become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. Outwork your self-doubt."

True confidence is a lagging metric of execution. It isn't a feeling you manufacture before you do the work. It is the data-driven result of your preparation.

Your confidence grows by showing up, tackling hard things, failing at them, and then figuring out how to fix or improve them the next time. That loop of execution and calibration is what builds a stack of undeniable proof.

But this creates a brutal paradox: How do you start when you enter a brand-new arena and your stack of proof for that specific skill is at exactly zero?

The Gym Paradox

As a coach, I see this play out in the fitness world constantly.

People will look at a high-intensity training program or a specialized facility and say, "I really want to do that, but I need to get in shape first before I sign up." Or clients will approach me and say, "I want to hire you for personal training, but I need to lose twenty pounds on my own first."

On the surface, it looks like a logical plan. In reality, it’s a defensive mechanism.

Because their "gym proof stack" is entirely empty, the threat of public exposure and judgment feels overwhelming. They try to fabricate competence in secret before they allow themselves to step into the room.

But in my opinion, they have the order completely backward. You don’t build the stack to enter the room. Entering the room is how you build the stack. You have to be willing to survive the messy, uncomfortable phase of failing and fixing if you ever want to build true competence.

When you stall out because you lack a proof stack in a new arena, you don't need to manifest fake confidence. You need to trigger a spillover from an old one.

Asset Transfer: The Process Stack

You might be a rookie at the execution of a brand-new skill, but if you have achieved anything difficult in your life, you are a veteran at the process.

When a client tells me they need to lose weight before they start training, we immediately audit their life outside the gym. Have they built a successful career? Have they raised a family? Have they shown up consistently for a decade to a demanding craft?

That is their Process Stack.

They don't have a fitness proof stack yet, but they have a massive stack of evidence proving they know how to handle pressure, manage details, show up when they don't want to, and figure hard things out.

To break the paradox, you strip away the context of your past success and isolate the underlying mechanics. You don't transfer the technical skill; you transfer the system. You fund the beginning of your new, empty stack using the psychological capital of your old one.

Skin in the Game

I’m not just sharing this as an abstract coaching framework. I am actively living it right now with this newsletter.

Some of you might remember that I launched MarkMAIL once before. It grew a decent audience, but behind the scenes, execution was sporadic. Because I hadn’t built a repeatable system for it, I never felt comfortable. Lacking structure, the project slipped to the back burner.

Reviving MarkMAIL as a consistent, weekly publication meant confronting that exact same empty proof stack. My brain wanted to fall back on the old defense mechanism: I need to refine this more in private, get further ahead on drafts, and wait until it feels perfectly comfortable before I put it back out there.

But that’s the trap. Comfort doesn't precede consistency; consistency builds comfort.

I don't have a deep archive of newsletters yet. But I do have a twenty-year stack of proof regarding standard operating procedures: showing up on time, executing a game plan, calibrating after a miss, and trusting a system even when the immediate outcome is uncertain.

I’m funding the re-launch of this newsletter with the veteran capital of my preparation habits. The goal isn't a flawless performance out of the gate; it's the commitment to show up every single Wednesday, analyze the misses, and build the stack in public.

The Spillover Audit

If you are currently sitting on the sidelines of a new project, a business venture, or a physical milestone because you don't feel "ready," stop trying to manufacture confidence. Run a Spillover Audit instead:

1. Identify the Deficit: Name the new arena where your proof stack is currently at zero.

2. Locate the Surplus: Identify the domain where you possess absolute certainty and a deep archive of execution.

3. Extract the Lead Variables: Isolate the non-technical traits that built that past success (e.g., obsessive preparation, emotional regulation, ruthless consistency).

4. Deploy the Capital: Explicitly apply those exact traits to the rookie endeavor this week.

Stop waiting for the confidence to enter the room. Step into the room, use your process stack to survive the friction, and start laying down the first bricks of your new undeniable proof.

See you next Wednesday,

Mark

No offense to Chris Cuthbert on the call, but I still hear Bob on the play-by-play during these massive moments. And how fitting would it have been to have Bob—a native Newfoundlander—on the mic when Alex Newhook scored that overtime winner to send the Montreal Canadiens to the conference finals.

I didn’t grow up a Habs fan. But as overtime started in Game 7, it seemed like Montreal was clinging to their last bit of life, and it felt like Buffalo had them on the ropes through the second half of that hockey game. Watching it unfold, I immediately thought of my friends who are die-hard Habs fans. I even reached out to a few of them to do a quick check-in, you know, for some moral support.

It’s not easy being a sports fan. The ups and downs of a grueling season, paired with the suffocating pressure of the playoffs, is enough to cut a few years off your life. God knows the curling teams I’ve played on have caused more internal stress than anyone actively desires to go through. But that’s the fun part, isn’t it? That’s what makes sport the ultimate theatre. It’s unscripted, unpredictable, and downright cinematic.

The stakes in Buffalo couldn’t have been higher. Two incredibly talented, young teams fighting to book their ticket to the final four. And while I can’t know for sure what was said in those locker rooms during the intermission, I think we all have a pretty good idea.

Personally, I find it hard not to get tied up in the drama of it all. My boys are Habs fans, so naturally, I wanted them to see their team succeed. It just makes the experience way more fun.

What made it even harder was trying not to jump out of my seat in excitement when Alex Newhook put the puck in the back of the net. As a proud NLer, seeing a fellow athlete from this province perform on one of the grandest stages, under that type of microscope, and be THE GUY to send his team through, I couldn’t be happier or more proud. For him, for his family, and for everyone who deserves to feel the unique electricity that sports can deliver.

Can you imagine the feeling of being in the middle of all that? How would you handle it? Based on some of the wild reactions and comments I read on social media afterward, I’d love to hear some of those armchair quotes delivered on national television!

While I don’t know exactly how the pressure of the NHL playoffs hits those specific athletes, I do know what it feels like to be in a do-or-die, win-or-you-go-home moment with the world watching and analyzing your every move. It tests you in ways you can’t fully comprehend until you’re standing in it.

To compare my curling career to the hard-hitting, physical pace of an NHL hockey game might seem unfair at first glance. But as I watched those players put everything on the line, I felt compelled to map out what was going on in my own head for you all to take in.

In curling, teams take turns delivering stones. You have time to pause, plan, discuss options, and make highly calculated decisions. Hockey, on the other hand, is entirely reactive. Decisions are made in split seconds at top speed. You don’t have the luxury of time. You just trust your training and instinct. Sometimes it works beautifully, but many times it doesn’t.

As fans, we live and die with every single sequence. Every shot carries immense meaning, and a solitary mistake can end a season. Here’s the beautiful paradox of it all: while one fan base is cheering or dissecting a play, the opposing supporters are doing the exact same thing with a completely different emotional lens. Two people can watch the exact same sequence and see two entirely different realities, entirely based on their loyalty.

As someone who has lived on both sides of this competitive coin, here is how I’ve experienced those exact gauntlets.

I’ve played in my fair share of high-stakes environments, from the Olympic Games and World Championships to our national championship, The Brier. Every single time you step into that arena, it “feels” a little different. At times, you are playing out of your mind and everything runs on autopilot. It feels effortless, and you just hope nobody gets in your way. Other times, the weight of the universe seems to settle on your shoulders. It feels heavy, tempting you to believe you need to “do more” or “try harder” to get the exact same result.

We all know that rarely ends well.

I’ve gone into Brier finals feeling the most confident I’ve ever felt in my life, and lost. Other times, I’ve set foot on the ice just hoping I wouldn’t leave my teammates in too much trouble, and the exact opposite happened, we thrived. The mind has a strange, complicated way of playing games with you when the stakes rise.

Competing in two National Championships in our own backyard here in St. John’s stands out as some of the most intense, pressure-packed moments of my life. Recency bias allows me to recall those memories vividly, and while it’s incredibly difficult to put into words, here is my best go at it.

Walking out onto the ice surface from backstage at Mile One (now the Mary Brown’s Centre) was unlike any other building I have ever competed in. From the deafening roar of the team introductions to the slow, agonizing build of energy through an entire end, it felt completely surreal.

In a curling environment, you can actually hear the whispers in the stands as thousands of people try to calculate what shot you’re going to play next. You can feel the collective gasp and the massive sigh of relief from the crowd as your rock squeaks past a guard as you make a perfect hit-and-roll. And, of course, there is the explosive roar when you execute a big-weight runback or a double takeout to score a big end. That noise didn’t just hit your ears, you felt it vibrating right down into your toes.

The hardest part of that entire experience? Forcing yourself not to try too hard.

That is significantly easier said than done when you know every single soul in that building wants the win just as badly as you do. Your brain screams at you to push harder, to grip tighter, to force the outcome. In hockey, an extra burst of adrenaline might help you win a race to a loose puck. In our world, that extra tension can be fatal. It can mess with your release and wreck your weight control. Yet, to the outside observer, “just trying harder” always seems like the simplest solution.

As an athlete, you have to fight like hell to stay strictly in the present moment. Safely parking a missed shot or a blown opportunity is a trait I admire most in the all-time greats, but it is a skill I’ve had to work incredibly hard to develop. Much harder than I care to admit.

But I also think that struggle is what makes me who I am. Over time, my perspective shifted. I realized I wanted to win far more for my teammates, my family, and our supporters than I ever needed it for my own resume. It wasn’t always that way early in my career, but I like this version of myself a lot better than the one from years past.

After all these years of putting myself into those high-pressure situations, I can honestly say that those exact, conflicting emotions are the entire reason we play. While we work to stay grounded, the mind naturally wants to drift backward into regret or forward into anticipation. It brings to mind the famous quote by Lao Tzu: “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

Finding that peace in the center of an arena is the ultimate test of performance. As fans sitting comfortably on the couch, it is easy to dissect a mistake in slow motion with a resting heart rate in the 60s. We view sports through a simple lens: our team executed, or our team failed.

But from the ice, the view is entirely different. You quickly learn that at the highest level, the opposition gets a vote. There is another group of hyper-disciplined, equally desperate elite performers on the other side of the red line, or the curling sheet, who are fighting just as hard to silence your crowd and write their own script. When a play breaks down under that microscope, it’s rarely due to a lack of effort. More often, it’s simply the razor-thin margin of two unstoppable forces colliding.

The criticism from the outside will always exist. It’s the unavoidable tax you pay for playing a game that people care about so deeply. But the flip side of that coin is a collective euphoria that you cannot replicate anywhere else in everyday life. When the plan connects, when your micro-habits hold up under thousands of pounds of pressure, and the puck or the rock hits the exact target, the explosion of shared joy validates every single bit of the voluntary struggle.

Watching Alex Newhook celebrate in Buffalo with his teammates, surrounded by the sudden, stunned silence of a hostile Buffalo arena, I didn’t just see a hockey goal. I saw an athlete who successfully stayed in the present moment long enough to let his instincts take over. I saw a family who sacrificed for decades to help him reach that precise spot. And I saw a province getting to share in a moment of pure, cinematic magic.

It’s an impossible feeling to fully explain to someone who hasn’t stood directly in the center of it. But man, it is a beautiful thing to witness.

Ohhhhhhh Baby, indeed.

Mark

This chat is designed for high-signal, low-noise conversation. It’s where I’ll be ‘auditing’ my own leading measures—from heart rate data to recovery habits—and sharing the lessons I’m learning in real-time.

As an MNU Certified Nutritionist and someone who has spent 25 years at the highest level of sport, I’m a big believer in the ‘ego check’.

I’m here to help you audit your own systems. What’s a habit or goal you’re currently trying to calibrate?

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How to get started

1. Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.

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2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

But there’s a specific kind of growth that only happens when you’re willing to trade being an expert for being a novice. I’ve reached a point where I want to see if the systems I’ve built over two decades can survive a completely different environment.

My arena has always been one of technical precision. It’s a world where success is measured in millimeters and tactical patience. And now, I’m stepping into theirs to see what happens when the technical grind turns into a purely physical one.

I’ve officially registered for the Hyrox Open in Toronto on October 3rd. While the “ice” is being replaced by a race floor, the fundamental requirement remains the same: building a system that can handle the redline without breaking.

There’s just one problem: I don’t like running.

I’ve spent most of my professional life avoiding long-distance work. It’s not something that comes naturally to me, and it’s certainly not something I “enjoy.” But that is exactly why I signed up.

I’m a big fan of Chris Williamson’s podcast, ‘Modern Wisdom’, and he often talks about the idea of “choosing your suffering.” The logic is that if you don’t voluntarily opt into a difficult challenge, life will eventually pick a struggle for you, and you probably won’t like its choice.

By choosing Hyrox, I’m forcing myself to train the very thing I typically avoid.

But, this isn’t about “gutting it out” blindly. It’s about using the data to bridge the gap. While I’ve always prioritized my fitness and put in the long, steady-state hours on the rower to maintain my aerobic base, running is a different animal.

In the curling world, I know the systems inside and out. But in this arena, I’m starting from scratch.

The Freedom of the Beginner
There is a unique kind of fun in intentionally being mediocre at something. To be an elite athlete in one domain and a complete beginner in another is a massive ego check, but it’s where the growth happens. I’m working closely with my coach and my WHOOP data to keep the training on track. The goal isn't to become a lifelong marathoner, or even an elite Hyrox athlete. It’s to embrace the grind and watch the needle move in an arena where I’m starting from zero.

As I prepare for this next chapter with Team Dunstone, this challenge isn't about replacing my current training; it’s about adding another layer to it. It provides that extra spark of motivation to ensure I’m entering the season in the best shape possible, with the biggest engine I’ve ever had. That only happens if I’m willing to step away from what I’m already good at and embrace the challenge of being a beginner again.

So, if you see this NLer out for a run and it looks like I’m fighting a losing battle, just know that I’m doing it for the ‘growth’. I might whine about it along the way, but I’m told it’s a part of the process.

The truth is, there is a lot of freedom in being a beginner. Mostly because the only way to go is up. It’s an ego check that keeps you sharp, whether you're on the ice or the race floor. Whether I’m fighting a losing battle with a treadmill or accidentally blundering my queen in a casual game of chess, I’m learning to embrace the struggle.

What about you? We all have that one area we avoid because it’s uncomfortable. What’s the one thing in your life right now that you’d be willing to be ‘enthusiastically mediocre’ at just for the chance to improve? What’s your version of a voluntary struggle?

Hit reply and tell me your story. I’ll read them while I’m catching my breath. I’m in the trenches with you.

Mark

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out a “MarkMAIL.”

For those who were along for the ride of the original MarkMAIL newsletter, welcome back. For those who are new, a quick introduction: My name is Mark Nichols. I’m an athlete in the sport of curling—a game of extreme precision often described as “chess on ice”. Over the last 25 years, that game has taken me to two Olympic Games and several national and world championships.

Beyond the arena, I am a fitness and nutrition professional with a Bachelor of Kinesiology and am a MNU Certified Nutritionist.

What is MarkMAIL?

This is my “Performance Lab”—a place for me to share and explore the things that make me tick. I want to use this space to talk about what I’m currently doing in training and life, and share insights that might be of some benefit to you.

Recently, I’ve been navigating a personal “tug-of-war”. At 46, many have asked if I’m ready to retire to spend more time at home in St. John’s with my wife, Colette, and my two boys, Beckett and Emmett. While family is my priority, I realized I’m not done yet. I still have the competitive itch, and I know I have more value to add to a team.

I’m bringing back this newsletter to share the actual tools I use to stay in the game. From the simple habits that keep my energy up and my health on track, to how I keep my head straight when the pressure is at its peak. Whether it’s a big game or just a long Tuesday, I’ve realized the mental and physical prep is the same.

What you can expect:

• The Tactical: Practical drills and nutrition insights that improve your daily engine.

• The Personal: Honest updates on my new journey with Team Dunstone and balancing elite sport with parenting.

• The Random: Technical curiosities like 3D printing, travel hacks from 25 years on the road, and the occasional “unpopular opinion”. You’ll also likely hear about my ongoing disdain for running (despite doing it anyway) and the fact that I’m remarkably bad at actual chess, despite being addicted to it.

Most of us are navigating our own version of a “tug-of-war”. Whether you are an athlete balancing life while trying to raise your floor or a professional trying to lead a team while managing a busy household, the challenges are remarkably similar. We are all trying to excel in high-pressure environments without burning out or sacrificing our health.

I’m moving from being just a competitor to being a partner in performance. Whether you’re an athlete, a professional, or a parent trying to improve your daily output, I hope you find something here useful.

Let’s get to work.

— Mark

I’m bringing back MarkMAIL to share an unfiltered look at that drive, the next chapter, and how I’m still working on raising my own floor.

The first update drops Wednesday, May 6th at 08:00 AM NDT. Pull up a chair and get on the list, I’d love to have you a part of the conversation.