Q&A March 2026

Escaping fitness tracker anxiety, the ultimate 70+ longevity workout, and why minimalist shoes might be ruining your joints.

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It’s time for our Q&A.

We had some excellent questions submitted in the Two Percent chat.

I’ll answer the following:

• I think I’m addicted to my Garmin metrics. What are some analog-only ways to track my fitness, sleep, etc?

• I’m 77 years old. How would you adapt my workout for aging well?

• I eat more than the 2,300mg of sodium a day recommendation. Should I be worried? What should I do?

• What are your thoughts on under-the-desk treadmills for those of us tied to a desk for hours at a time?

• What are your thoughts on high-incline treadmills (the ones that go up to a 40% incline) for people who live in flat parts of the world?

• What footwear do you recommend for rucking? I’ve been using my Vivo shoes (barefoot/minimalist shoes), and I’m not sure if that’s the right approach.

• How do you divide your time between writing books and posting on Substack?

• Any practical advice for hiking/trail running in rattlesnake country? (P.S. I had way too much fun answering this question).

• Stones or Beatles?

• What’s the Two Percent approach to creativity (whether writing, art, taking an acting class, etc.)?

• Besides the Grateful Dead, what jam bands are you into?

• I’m a busy college student balancing a mathematically intensive workload with endurance training, with a long-term goal of completing a full Ironman. It’s tough. How should someone think about optimizing across these competing demands?

• What are your nutrition strategies for long outings when you know you need to eat/drink more but aren’t hungry/thirsty, and nothing is appetizing?

Let’s roll …

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I’m a tech-addicted ultrarunner, hiker, and triathlete. Lately (for months), my Garmin’s metrics have been bothering me, and I’m overly fixated on them. I’m going to take a holiday from my sports watches and just run and lift and hike for a while without heart rate, maps, and recovery scores. What’s your analog-only, or at least mostly low-tech, approach for assessing training adaptation, sleep quality, and recovery? -Alex

Addiction, huh? In that case …

Step one: We admitted we were powerless over our fitness tracker metrics and that our lives had become unmanageable.

Fitness trackers are a tool. Whether they help you or hurt you depends on how you use them.

For people new to fitness, they can enhance awareness. Some people have a vague sense they’re sedentary but don’t act until they see “4,000 steps” staring at them at the end of the day. That’s useful.

That said, every metric on your fitness tracker is some degree of wrong. Read more about that here. And once you’ve gotten the basics, getting too attached to the data can backfire. Our goals shift from all the wonderful things living healthy can do for us to a neurotic numbers game.

Which brings me to something I noticed in your question: You began your question by telling me that tracking was hurting you, and then asked me for new ways to track.

Why not track nothing for one month? Live your active life as normal. Do your workouts. Eat well. Go to bed at a reasonable time. Pay attention to how you feel. Make fitness fun again.

When the month is up, strap the watch back on. Did your times collapse? Did your fitness fall off a cliff because a device wasn’t telling you your activity score was an 80 instead of a 90?

If nothing has changed, it might suggest you’ve learned everything you need to learn from your tracker and can ride on your own now.

The ultimate goal is to know yourself. When I recently appeared on Rich Roll, he said something that stuck with me:

If you’re outsourcing everything to [fitness trackers], you’re missing an opportunity [to learn]. I just remember in my early swimming days, before heart rate monitors and Garmins, exactly what my heart rate was because I’d made a kind of mental mind-body connection. I could tell you without looking at a pace clock what my split was or what my time was, because you just, I just knew myself that well.

I think these tools are just fancy versions of stopwatches and putting your finger on your neck to figure out your heart rate. They can help you develop a connection with yourself. But if you’re not making that connection, then you become reliant upon them.

P.S.: Here’s that episode:

I’m 77-year-old and do kettlebell presses, cleans, and chair squats Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I do deadlifts and walking Tuesday and Thursday. What would you change or add? -Harvey Eilbaum

First things first: this is wonderful. Most people your age are driving around a golf course in a motorized cart and calling it a workout. You’re doing legit strength and cardio work.

But since you asked, here’s what I might consider adding: