👋 Hey. Welcome to issue #145 of The Everyday Athlete Newsletter.
Here are my 3 favourite ideas, learns and resources to help you improve your performance this week (6 min read):
🧠 Dopamine detoxes are BS — here's what to do instead
You order your first stone and wood on a Friday arvo.
Your brain thinks: "schooners = amazing!"
And so it pumps you with a HUGE dose of dopamine because it's expecting something good. Like Pavlov's dog, you literally start salivating.
The ice cold glass hits your hand, the airy froth hits your lips, the golden liquid hits your throat.
Your brain thinks: "hoooooly, this IS amazing. better than lego!"
And so it gives you a bonus dopamine hit because reality exceeded expectations.
Your mate just split the G. You have your second sip. Life's good.
Your brain thinks: "yep, still bloody good. just as I expected." Bit more dopamine.
By the second schooner, your brain doesn't care if the beers are great, it cares if they're better than predicted.
And so by the tenth sip, your brain thinks: "this sip is exactly what I thought it'd be."
= no bonus dopamine. Because it already figured out the pattern and stopped rewarding you for it.
See dopamine is driven by prediction.
And this prediction game is what shapes our habits — because your brain will keep chasing anything that might be better than expected.
See our brains are constantly making bets about what will happen next.
Instagram notification? “oooh this could be good"
Chocolate? “this’ll make me feel better"
Netflix? “this’ll help me chill out”
And so when these things deliver (even a little), our brains reward the behaviour.
The problem is that modern life is designed to hijack this system.
Your phone buzzes → you check it → sometimes it's interesting → your brain rewards checking.
You feel stressed → you scroll → you feel better for a bit → your brain rewards scrolling.
You're bored → you snack → it tastes bloody good → your brain rewards snacking.
But here’s where it backfires…
See our brains have a balance scale.
Pleasure on one side. Pain on the other.
Every time we get a dopamine hit, the scale tips toward pain after.
This is why we'll feel like trash after a 30 minute scroll. The brain is trynna balance the books.
The more we chase highs, the lower our baseline gets.
So you’ll hear some lemons telling you to do a dopamine detox. “Reset your brain!”
But…
You can't detox from dopamine.
It's like trying to detox from oxygen. We need it to function.
Dopamine controls:
- 🏃 Movement (lose it = Parkinson's)
- 💪 Motivation (lose it = can't be bothered doing anything)
- 🎯 Focus (lose it = can't concentrate)
- 💓 Basic survival stuff
If you actually deleted dopamine, you wouldn't be able to move or eat.
See when people do a "dopamine detox" and feel better, it's not because they reset their dopamine.
It's because they:
- ✅ Broke some bad habits temporarily
- 👀 Removed environmental triggers
- ❌ Practiced saying no to impulses
- 💪 Felt good about completing a challenge
But...
Going cold turkey like this can backfire.
Your brain gets starved of stimulation. And so when you go back to normal life, everything feels more intense.
You often binge harder than before.
It's like crash dieting. Works for a week, then you slam a block of Cadbury before bed.
So what do we do instead?
First, a mindset shift:
Don't go cold turkey. Make small changes.
Then, stop fighting the brain. And work with it...
The first challenge is awareness — to catch yourself mid-pattern.
Most people are on autopilot — phone buzzes, hand moves, brain gets reward. Break the loop with awareness first.
(and like it or not, after reading this, you're more likely to be aware of this stuff. for a day or two anyway. leverage that!)
Then:
- 👀 Remove the cues (not the dopamine). E.g. Can't stop checking your phone? Put it in another room. Download the OneSec app. Get a mobile phone prison.
- 🏆 Leverage the prediction game. Your brain releases dopamine before you get the reward. So focus on building anticipation for good stuff. E.g. Don’t feel like training? Think about how you’ll feel after you finish. The happy chemicals. The sense of accomplishment. Let the brain get excited.
- 🎧 Train your brain to reward productive stuff. E.g. Only listen to favourite podcast when exercising.
"Dopamine detox" is just fancy marketing for "take a break from stuff that's probably bad for you."
But our brains need dopamine. The solution isn't to starve our brains. It's to be more aware of how they control us + feed ‘em better stuff.
Our modern environment is set up for us to fail. And if we don’t consciously design our habits, our environment will design them for us.
🍎 The best nutrition habit no one talks about
One of the most powerful nutrition habits (that isn’t protein, fibre or whole foods):
Eating at the same time every day (or within a one-hour window).
It trains our bodies (specifically hunger hormones) to know when to expect food and when not to. Which helps us:
- 🥑 Prevent both overeating when we’re super hungry and undereating when we’re not
- ⏰ Feeds our circadian rhythm (which craves consistency) – benefiting energy and sleep
Seriously powerful habit that gets overlooked.
🏌️ The $1000 coach you're not using
Babe Didrikson was that annoying kid at school — good at everything.
She was the 20th century Swiss army knife of elite sports accomplishments — Olympic gold medalist in hurdles and javelin, a golf pro, and so good at baseball as a kid she got her nickname after Babe Ruth.
She was also a bit of a pioneer in using video analysis to get feedback on her form.
Back then, this required sponsorships and access to expensive camera gear.
Babe would have been living it up in the 21st century — a camera phone in your pocket!
And she'd be blowing up you're not using yours to film your form.
Here's the thing: no matter how long you've been doing something, our brains are wired to find the path of least resistance.
Those movement cues you learned early on... slip. That perfect form... may not be.
When we film ourselves, it helps ID the gaps between what we think we're doing and what we're actually doing.
I did it recently and noticed my kb snatches weren't locking out overhead as they should. Great feedback.
Great for the gym. But also running, swimming, any sport you wanna improve at.
Training alone? There’s a coach in your pocket.
That's it!
Have a great weekend 🤙
Matt
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The Everyday Athlete Newsletter is not a licensed health service nor a substitute for professional health advice, treatment or assessment. The information shared in this email is general and written for a specific audience. If you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional.
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