I recently turned 40.
In the last few years, I have clearly felt the decline of my physical strength. If I push myself even a little, I get tired immediately. Just having plans in the evening feels exhausting. There are days when my holidays end with recovery rather than enjoyment.
On the other hand, there are people in their 30s who work hard and have fulfilling home and private lives—people who are like "stamina monsters."
I realized that the foundation of life is, after all, physical strength.
I had atopic dermatitis since childhood and was physically weak; I was also a victim of bullying. Honestly, I was not a person on the side of having stamina. So, I had given up, thinking that stamina was something like a talent.
But around the age of 38, my thinking gradually changed. Even with a weak body, I began to see a realistic line for "building stamina without getting tired."
This isn't a story about stoic muscle training or intense morning routines. It's a story about the ingenuity a frail person uses to increase their output despite being frail.
What we are aiming for here is not to become a born "real stamina monster."
It is a method to aim for being a "pseudo-stamina monster."
It is also the know-how I assembled through trial and error and experimentation to gain more action power than the average person, despite my frailty.
I think the true identity of people who look like stamina monsters is "people who are good at managing their own energy." They rest properly in places you can't see. They don't accumulate unnecessary fatigue. Even if they break down, their recovery is fast. That's why they look like they can keep moving forever.
In other words, they aren't winning just by the total amount of stamina. They are good at leaving the stamina they can use in the places where it's needed.
It's natural for the gap in stamina to widen in your 30s because it's a period when you gradually spend the "savings" from your youth. Until your 20s, you can push through some unreasonableness with sheer willpower. You recover even if you stay up late for a day. Even if your diet is junk, you can somehow keep moving.
But in your 30s, the story changes. The damage from bad habits accumulates. Recovery takes time. By the time you notice, you're in a state where you're easily tired, easily gain weight, can't concentrate, and your holidays end with recovery.
That's quite bad. You don't even have the stamina to build stamina... In fact, it was a trap I fell into myself.
The way of thinking to avoid that and aim for a "pseudo-stamina monster" consists of three points:
1. Suppress damage. First, reduce energy leakage.
2. Suppress energy consumption. Improve fuel efficiency and create a state where you don't get tired unnecessarily.
3. Increase stamina stock. Have a spare tank so that your body doesn't drop easily even with a little strain.
In other words, instead of forcing yourself to become strong with guts,
It's a process of preparing yourself to be hard to chip away at, hard to tire, and able to handle a little strain.
Through my late 30s, I've come to understand that this is the way to aim for a "pseudo-stamina monster."
Today, I'd like to verbalize those "small habits to become a pseudo-stamina monster in your 30s," narrowing them down to 10.
1. Prioritize sleep above all else
Ultimately, this is the foundation.
Both mental state and motivation are heavily influenced by sleep. When you lack sleep, your judgment becomes dull. What's scary is that the more sleep-deprived you are, the more insensitive you become to your own performance decline.
In an experiment by Van Dongen et al. on healthy adults, limiting sleep to 4 or 6 hours a day resulted in accumulated cognitive decline over 14 days. On the other hand, the sleepiness felt by the subjects did not increase as much as the actual decline in ability.
In other words, even though brain function is dropping, you are likely to misunderstand that you've "gotten used to it."
Furthermore, a study by Dawson and Reid, which is cited in many places, reports that the decline in cognitive and motor performance after being awake for 17 consecutive hours is equivalent to a blood alcohol concentration of around 0.05%.
Sleep deprivation chips away at judgment and reaction speed, regardless of a person's willpower.
The more sleep-deprived you are, the less you should trust the thought "I can still go."
Lack of sleep leads to work taking longer, which leads to not finishing, which leads to sleeping late, which leads to performance dropping again. This loop is dangerous.
To raise the baseline of stamina without getting tired, securing sleep is the first priority. Instead of working hard by sacrificing sleep time, secure sleep time no matter what. This is just about right.
A pseudo-stamina monster is not someone who works long hours by cutting sleep. They are people who can keep their output high during waking hours by sleeping well.
2. Take care of your gut environment
The gut environment is super important.
This is not a pun.
There is a bidirectional communication pathway between the gut and the brain via nerves, immunity, and endocrine systems, known as the "gut-brain axis." The fact that mood, stress, and digestive symptoms influence each other is supported by research.
However, caution is needed as we are not yet at the stage where we can say that changing human gut bacteria will immediately improve mental state or concentration.
A review in the journal Gastroenterology also notes that while there are promising results in animal studies, verification is still needed for application to human diagnosis and treatment.
That said, I personally feel this influence quite strongly. When my body feels heavy, my head feels foggy, or I become mysteriously unstable, the condition of my gut is often bad.
There was a period when I felt I had significantly improved my allergies at age 35, and at that time, I spent about two months focusing solely on improving my gut environment. Even now, if things get worse, I review that first.
However, if you have long-lasting abdominal pain, diarrhea, or strong fatigue, it's better to check the cause at a medical institution rather than continuing to cut out foods on your own.
What you can do in daily life are simple things like taking dietary fiber, reducing overeating, trying fermented foods, and not being biased toward only the same foods. If you're interested, you can find hints by looking into the Paleo diet or the Mediterranean diet.
If you're aiming to be a pseudo-stamina monster, look at your gut before hard training.
When the gut is disturbed, life itself becomes disturbed.
3. Sweat every day
If you haven't sweated lately, your daily activity level has probably dropped.
The sweat I'm talking about here is not the passive sweat you get in a sauna. It's sweat from moving your body. Use the stairs at the station. Walk for one station. Walk a little faster. Occasionally go up the stairs.
It's difficult to suddenly make hard exercise a habit. But you can create a life where you move your body a little every day.
People whose stamina drops often aren't just lacking exercise; they've stopped using their bodies in daily life. Before training with high awareness at a gym, it's easier to start by reducing sitting time and returning activity to your commute.
The important thing isn't the sweat itself. It's raising your heart rate and activity level to the point where you sweat.
Just by starting to sweat a little every day in your daily life, the floor of your stamina will change significantly.
4. Do exercise that gets you out of breath once a week
Moving every day is important. But with just that, there are parts where stamina won't fully grow.
Therefore, include exercise at a level that gets you out of breath once a week. This is an effort to raise your heart rate and give a slightly stronger stimulus to your cardiopulmonary function.
That said, you don't have to run like crazy. You don't need to do it like an intense sports club. A 20-minute brisk walk, an exercise bike, burpees, or HIIT with adjusted intensity. Start from around here.
By the way, I do HIIT about once every two days. If you're a beginner, refer to the Tabata style time structure, but don't push yourself to the limit from the start; it's better to start from a level where your breathing quickens. (I recommend searching for "Tabata style" on YouTube.)
The WHO recommends 150–300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, or 75–150 minutes of high-intensity exercise, or a combination of both, per week for adults.
So please think of "once a week" not as the final form, but as an entry point for people who haven't been moving to return stimulus to their heart and lungs.
Increasing daily activity and occasionally stimulating the heart and lungs. Having both will significantly change your stamina.
A pseudo-stamina monster is not someone who pushes themselves to the limit every day. They are people who sweat in daily life and put a slightly tough stimulus on their heart and lungs within a reasonable range.
5. Eliminate the causes of stress
For practical purposes, I think of stress in two types.
One is good stress. It is proactive, has an end, and leads to a sense of accomplishment. (Similar to games.)
The other is bad stress. It is passive, chronic, has no end in sight, and slowly chips away at you. (Like the irrationality of a terrible boss.)
This bad stress is truly dangerous. It eats away at your heart and increases bad habits. Staying up late, binge eating and drinking, idling on your smartphone, escapism. If these are increasing, be careful.
Even if you think you have a strong mentality, if your life is falling apart, you are already starting to break.
So what's needed isn't just symptomatic treatment.
It's cutting off the root.
I recommend first writing it down on paper. What is painful? What is on your mind? What is chipping away at your mentality? Visualize it, dig deep, and think of countermeasures.
Sometimes the performance of a person who has decided to change jobs suddenly improves because they have cut off the root. Even if the source of stress itself hasn't disappeared, the moment they see an exit—"I can get away from here"—their usable energy can return.
When we think of building stamina, we tend to imagine exercise, but just by reducing stress sources, the stamina you can actually use increases significantly.
6. Know the conditions that make you tired
This is also quite helpful personally.
What type of things make you tired? What makes your body feel heavy all at once? Just knowing this makes a big difference.
For example,
- Packing your schedule the day after a lack of sleep is a disaster.
- Spending long hours with people is exhausting.
- Successive dinner meetings make it impossible to get up.
- Having 5 hours of meetings in a day makes the brain feel hot.
- Overeating makes me useless the next day.
It's quite important to know your "chipping points." The less stamina a person has, the more they will collapse if they try to imitate strong people.
So what's needed is self-understanding, not self-denial.
Knowing "What makes me tired?" makes it much easier to protect your stamina. I recommend recording just three lines about the day before you felt tired: sleep, meals, and schedule. Just looking at these three will reveal the patterns that chip away at you.
A pseudo-stamina monster is also someone who knows their weaknesses and can take countermeasures in advance.
7. Secure a place to "wash your heart"
When you are hopelessly tired or fed up, have a place to go and wash your heart. I think this is essential for modern people.
When you have a family or a position, these places disappear unless you are conscious of them. I feel this is one reason for the sauna boom.
For me,
- Saunas
- Public baths
- Manga cafes
- Places where I can spend time quietly in a private room
- A favorite Chinese restaurant
- A favorite large bookstore
I found these to be quite effective.
Places where you can shut out the outside world. Places where you don't have to think about anything. Places where no one expects anything from you. Just having these places makes it easier for not just stamina, but also morale to return.
The important thing is not to think about "what will make me feel better" after you are completely exhausted. Register your recovery spots before you get tired.
Don't just have the skill to work hard; have a place to return to properly. Don't just train; secure time to refresh. This is important.
8. Try various supplements
Supplements are just supplements. But they are quite effective.
Actually, the effect is easiest to feel when you are supplementing nutrients that are lacking.
It's wrong to try to manage with just supplements when your life is falling apart. But if you use them after preparing the foundation, they can be helpful. Moreover, the things that are lacking and the things that are compatible differ from person to person.
For example, in my case, when I want to increase concentration, I use theanine in a set with caffeine.
For an allergic constitution, high-absorption type curcumin was easy to feel the effect of.
When I lacked motivation, creatine worked. When I had trouble falling asleep, magnesium could be a help.
However, this is just my personal experience, and it's not a story that the same effect will occur for everyone.
Even when I say "try various things," if you put in many types at the same time, you won't know what worked or what didn't fit. If you use them, check the amount of ingredients and interactions with medicine, and try them one by one.
And if strong fatigue lasts for a long time, check the cause before looking for supplements. There is fatigue that cannot be solved by lifestyle improvement alone, such as anemia, sleep apnea, or thyroid problems.
Lifestyle is the lead. Supplements are training wheels.
It's better not to forget this order. A pseudo-stamina monster is not made with magic supplements.
It's something you make by adding a few missing ingredients to the foundation of your life.
9. Detox occasionally
The detox I'm talking about here is not some mysterious spiritual story. It's not a story about toxins in the body conveniently leaving.
It's simply a sense of returning a body that has become heavy due to overeating or a rough diet to a light state once.
In my case,
I occasionally do things like fasting or the so-called "Four Poison Exclusion."
However, this doesn't mean these are medically necessary detoxes for everyone. Long-term fasting or methods of cutting out a wide range of foods for no reason can actually make some people feel unwell.
The important thing is not the name of an extreme health method.
- Stop overeating.
- Reduce snacking and alcohol once.
- Return a rough diet to a simple one.
- Review the way of eating that tends to make you feel unwell.
Starting from this level is enough.
Eating all the time. Putting in stimulants all the time. Making your internal organs work all the time. If you're becoming heavy by continuing this, let them rest once. Reset.
You don't have to do it perfectly every day. But it's strong to have a way to return when things fall apart.
People with stamina aren't always in perfect condition. They know they will break down and know how to return as needed. I think this is quite important.
10. Plan your schedule based on your tired self
Finally, this was quite important for me personally.
Plan your schedule based on your tired self.
We tend to make plans like: since we can run 100m in 15 seconds, we can run 10km as an extension of that in 1500 seconds, which is 25 minutes.
But if you do that, it becomes an unreasonable pace like the Japanese record for a full marathon.
Therefore, you should plan your schedule at a pace that even your tired self can handle, like 1 minute for 100m. With this, it's okay to walk in the middle, and it's hard to collapse even if there's some fluctuation.
Especially what people without stamina tend to do is exhaust themselves trying to build stamina, and instead become unable to move more than before.
I've had this happen many times. In terms of productivity, it's actually a minus.
So, don't base it on yourself on a energetic day. Make it a design that works even on a tired day. Instead of filling your schedule to 80%, leave margins from the start. Don't place important decisions in the evening. Make the day after a heavy schedule light.
Stamina is, after all, nothing but action power. So, keep your schedule in a form that works even for your tired self, not your ideal self.
I think a pseudo-stamina monster is someone who is good at designing a pace that is hard to collapse.
One last thing I want to tell you who are tired
The gap in stamina becomes large in your 30s because it's a period when you gradually spend the savings from your youth. Damage from bad habits also accumulates. By the time you notice, you're easily tired, easily gain weight, and your concentration breaks easily.
So what's needed isn't to force yourself to become strong.
Suppress damage. Suppress energy consumption. Increase stamina stock.
It's about steadily accumulating these three things.
Specifically,
- Prioritize sleep.
- Prepare the gut environment.
- Move your body a little every day.
- Include exercise that gets you out of breath.
- Cut off the root of stress.
- Know the conditions that make you tired.
- Have a place to wash your heart.
- Use supplements as an aid.
- Reset a rough diet.
- Plan your schedule based on your tired self.
Accumulating these small things was, in the end, the best.
Pseudo-stamina monsters rest in places you can't see, avoid being chipped away unnecessarily, and have a mechanism to return. They don't have infinite stamina. They are good at managing finite stamina to make it look infinite.
I'm also still in the middle of the road. But I feel that even if you're on the frail side, you can change little by little.
So just one thing is fine to start with.
I think it's good to start by reducing the habits that chip away at your stamina before you try to build stamina.
Reference Books + Recommended Books
- "The Stanford Method for Ultimate Sleep" by Seiji Nishino / Sunmark Publishing - "The Upside of Stress" by Kelly McGonigal / Daiwa Shobo - "ACTIVE HEALTH" by Yu Suzuki / CrossMedia Publishing - "The Bulletproof Diet" by Dave Asprey / Diamond Inc.
On this account, I verbalize daily under the theme of 1mm growth per day. Following is an encouragement.
