VOL. 1 · MAY 9, 2026

Welcome. Five things every Saturday: research worth knowing, a thought worth keeping, an action worth taking, a book worth reading, and a closing note from me. Read it slow. Coffee first—always.

THE RESEARCH — Low Fitness Is More Dangerous Than Smoking

A 2018 study in JAMA Network Open (Mandsager et al.) tracked 122,000 patients across 23 years, measuring cardiorespiratory fitness via treadmill testing. The bottom 25% in fitness had a mortality risk 5x higher than the top 2.3%.

Read that again. To put it in plain English: being out of shape carried more risk than smoking. More than diabetes. More than coronary artery disease. And there was no upper ceiling — the fittest men kept getting longevity benefits. You cannot, in this study, be too fit.

The takeaway: The treadmill, the bike, the rower, the rucksack (and most certainly the weight room, barbell, and dumbbells) — these are not vanity tools. They are the most reliable mortality intervention available to you. Your engine is the longest lever you’ve got. Train it.

Mandsager et al., 2018 (JAMA Network Open, 1(6), e183605)

WORTH REMEMBERING

Twenty-four centuries later and still nothing has dethroned this line. Most of the men I coach are not being conquered by anyone outside themselves. They are being conquered by the version of themselves who hits snooze, opens the fridge at 10 PM, opens the wrong app, opens the wrong tab. That’s the only war that matters most days.

Win that one and the rest mostly takes care of itself.

TRY THIS WEEK — Banish the Phone from the Bedroom

Buy a $15 alarm clock. Starting tonight, charge your phone in the kitchen (or the hallway or even just somewhere not within reach while you are in bed). Do it for seven nights.

What you’ll find:

• You sleep harder.
• You wake clearer.
• You’re not doom-scrolling at 11:47 PM.
• You’re not checking email at 6:03 AM before your feet hit the floor.
• Your wife notices.

This isn’t a productivity hack. It’s a sleep move, a marriage move, and a sanity move stacked into one decision. You’re still reachable in an emergency — just put the phone on the dresser and out of reaching distance. The rest can wait until the sun is up.

One week. That’s the ask.

FROM THE BOOKSHELF — Tribe by Sebastian Junger

Junger spent years embedded with combat units in Afghanistan. Tribe asks the question almost no one asks: why do so many veterans miss war when they come home?

The answer is the thesis of this whole newsletter. Modern men are starving for what every previous generation took for granted — a small group of brothers, depending on each other, with shared mission and shared risk. We’ve engineered tribe out of daily life and called it progress.

168 pages. You can finish it on a Saturday. Read it. Then call one of the men you used to go to war with — at work, on the field, in the gym, in faith — and tell him it’s been too long.

CLOSING THOUGHT

The book came out Tuesday. I won’t pitch it to you here — that’s not what this is for, and you’ve heard plenty from me elsewhere.

What I will say is this. Tuesday was strange. I expected the world to feel different. It didn’t. I expected the loud people to show up loudest. They didn’t. The men who said they’d be there were there. The rest mostly weren’t. The network was smaller and closer than I’d imagined — and that turned out to be the whole point.

Take inventory of who actually shows up for you. Then thank them. Then be that man for someone else.

Remember that doing the work is the reward. You cannot control anything else. Your job is to show up, work hard, and contribute — then let the chips fall where they may.

See you next Saturday.