Energy leeches are everywhere. Lack of energy is such a common reason for not training by many busy professionals.
You get to mid afternoon and you are running on empty already and it has only been a few hours since lunch and your are tired, irritable and frustrated at your lack of productivity. Going for a workout? Yeah right, your going home to crash on the couch!
Procrastination is the number one reason cited by people for not working out, your low energy levels contribute even more to your procrastination.
Your common energy leeches include, your computer monitor, the constant barrage of phone calls, or your boss giving you stress on the latest deadlines. This sucks you dry leaving you empty and ready for a night in doing nothing but feeling sorry for yourself. When you don’t go and do your workout, you’ll feel even more deflated lowering your energy levels yet further.
But going to do a workout can actually give you energy! “yeah right Tim, now you really are talking rubbish!” Seriously, despite the physical exertion of the workout, or participating in your sport, the
outcome can be a serious injection of positive energy. The body responds very well to physical activity, at certain intensities your body will stimulate the production of endorphins which give you that feel good glow after a particularly tough workout. This in itself becomes addictive.
Also by blocking out the energy drains, reducing the time spent answering the phone, or staring at your computer monitor, AND, promoting the energy boosts, eating the right foods, drinking water regularly and never missing a workout, you’ll quickly be full of energy again.
Jon, a very busy executive from a key multinational firm hated his workouts, at first it was a real struggle to get him in for our appointments. After a few particularly tough workouts I started to see Jon in the gym outside of our pre-arranged sessions. This then developed to almost every day in the gym. When questioned about this, he simply said with a smile “I still hate my workouts, I just love the feeling of finishing!”
This endorphin rush is quite real and can be brought about easily with workouts at high enough intensities. Many workouts I see being performed in the gym are just too slow and ineffective, whats more the low intensity will not give even a hint of the endorphin hit we are looking for, instead we are usually bored, demotivated and are desperately hanging on till the end of your workout.
Doing resistance based workouts with heavy weights for short repetition ranges are the opposite, and for guys gives a testosterone boost as well as the endorphin rush. A workout that utilises large muscle groups, such as squats, deadlift, push ups, rows and lunges will kick off an endorphin rush for both male and female exercisers.
Females fear not the bulky muscles, you don’t have the chemical makeup to achieve this, guys work hard and you’ll lose the gut as well as boost your sporting performances too!
Start today, by getting down to the gym and getting the advice of a trained fitness professional to show you the correct form for these fundamental exercises. I promise you you’ll view your workouts with more energy than ever before!
For a highly effective resistance workout and other time saving exercises, claim your free e-report “How to lose weight even when you are really busy” at http://www.corporateathletehandbook.com/. Tim Goodwin is author of The Corporate Athlete Conditioning Handbook and a fitness professional from Luxembourg, training the busiest individuals to achieve amateur sporting success and a healthier body. Feel free to duplicate this article with the bio and link intact.
What No Gym Train Any Where Any Time
04.06.08Excuses, I have heard them all…
Everything from “my wife didn’t wash my workout clothes” to “my dog ate my trainers”. All used to avoid doing a workout or even starting an exercise plan in the first place. But the one I here the most from the busy professional relates to lack of facilities…
“I travel a lot, so I cannot always get to a gym to do a workout”
My clients know better than to pull this one on me! Yes, lack of facilities does present limitations to your “normal” exercise program. Your travel schedule and location mean access to good quality gym facilities are often limited. Your training will lack consistency and your progress will be slow, especially when you travel every third week, or
a month away at a time!
“There is no gym close to my home or work place”
Most new office buildings are actually making provisions for fitness facilities, even if they are somewhat limited in some cases. As it happens the gym i spend the majority of my time in is based in the basement of a new office complex. A perfect place to fit in a fast workout during lunch, just before or just after work too.
Lack of facilities is not the legitimate excuse you may think it is. You can achieve as good a workout if not a more advanced workout WITHOUT any equipment than if you had a huge gym with every machine you can think of. There are many exercises that can be done outside of the gym environment. In fact you’ll find the use of those fancy, expensive looking machines in the gym is fairly limited, and whilst they are great for those not knowing what to do, they may not be the best use of your training time.
Bodyweight training however is massively underrated as a method of training, yet it is possible to get a superior workout using just your body weight as the resistance. In many situations most gym goers are using external resistance unnecessarily.
For example performing the perfect bodyweight squat, lunge, push up or chin up will give you much more of a workout than any machine you’ll find in the gym. Add some small, inexpensive pieces of equipment such as a stability ball, exercise mat and set of small dumbbells for exercises to be done at home, then your exercise choices are multiplied almost infinitely!
One particularly well travelled client was adamant that it was not possible to get a sweat from bodyweight exercises! 15 minutes in to our first routine she was racing for her water bottle and towel, and we hadn’t even touched a dumbbell…
Packing a simple exercise band, basically a long wide elasticated strip of rubber, into your luggage is a cheap, portable and very effective training tool. You can easily get a full body weight workout done in 30-40 minutes with just this piece of equipment. Squats, Lateral Raises, Rows, pulldowns etc etc can all be performed with the band to increase the resistance. Most of the items i have mentioned here can be picked up for very little money at most good fitness stores.
As you can see the lack of facilities should not be limiting your training program. A little bit of planning and investigating the right exercise for you and you’ll keep you training on track.
For a highly effective resistance workout and other time saving exercises, claim your free e-report “How to lose weight even when you are really busy” at http://www.corporateathletehandbook.com/. Tim Goodwin is author of The Corporate Athlete Conditioning Handbook and a fitness professional from Luxembourg, training the busiest individuals to achieve amateur sporting success and a healthier body. Feel free to duplicate this article with the bio and link intact.
ForestFit June Group 2
20.05.08A quick post to tell you all that Jess and I will run a 2nd ForestFit group for the month of June.
As well as the Early Morning group starting at 7 in the morning, we are also offering a 09:30 start time to accommodate those who have family priorities early in the morning.
So pack you kids off to school and join us for some energising workouts in the woods, and you’ll done before 10:30.
Go to the ForestFit website to register today for your place.
Tim
P.S. Places are limited, once they are all gone we cannot accept any more!
Is Water Your Best Sport Drink
20.04.08From an athletic point of view, being dehydrated can have devastating effects on your performance. Not only does your body slow down but your brain function is reduced, get dizzy, vomiting and an increase in the bodies core temperature.
Now consider that most of the population do not drink enough water, I recently read a statistic that claimed that 1 in 10 people did not drink any water at all! Most of us are relying on other forms of fluids throughout the day, some are more evil than others.
So it is highly likely that you are dehydrated all of the time, to some extent. This effects your concentration, your mood, and your energy levels throughout the day, just like it effects your sporting performance, it massively effects your professional performance too.
The corporate athlete often depends on excessive caffeine fixes, from coffee, teas and so called performance drinks to keep them going throughout the day, just water is just never entertained as an option!
The sodas out of your company snack machine are nothing more than a sugary fix which will just add to your waistline. Step away from these at all costs.
The problem is all these false fluids do not hydrate your body in the same way as plain water, and in many cases cause further dehydration.
To get the best out of your body the solution is really simple and obvious.
- Drink more water! To keep things simple, for every 50lbs of weight you should be drinking a litre of water per day!
- Avoid ALL other types of fluid intake PERIOD.
- Get into a habit of having a full litre and half bottle of water on your desk in the morning and make sure it is finished by lunch, then start again for the afternoon
- And if fat loss is your primary goal, then taking a serious look at your alcohol intake should be your first assignment.
- Drop the alcohol completely from today for 21 days and your body will shed inches like you wouldn’t believe!
Once you are getting the water intake your body needs to function properly, your sporting performances will see an improvement, and you will certainly stay more alert through your normal working day too.
Other benefits of proper water intake include massively improved skin condition, the way your body eliminates waste will be improved. You’ll also stop getting so many headaches and get less digestive problems too.
Whilst drinking water is not so interesting, the benefits are certainly worth the tiny amount of effort of starting today for the next 21 days. I am sure you’ll see the benefits immediately and miss it if you stop again!
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Claim your free “Warm Up” video at http://www.corporateathletehandbook.com/ . Tim Goodwin is author and fitness professional from Luxembourg, training the busiest individuals to achieve amateur sporting success and a healthier body.
Does you scheduler resemble open warfare? There is so much on there it is impossible to see gaps. Fitting in a workout would just not be possible, you’d have to cancel it anyway because meetings always over run, or someone else wants another “quick” meeting!
Whether you are a top executive, middle management or team player, the working day is full of distractions, seemingly “important” appointments and meetings.
Many of us confuse work and “busy work”. Busy work is the answering of phone calls, reading and answering emails, impromptu meetings with your boss or co-workers, that consume so much of your day. As such your days get longer, lunch hours get shorter (or completely consumed), and late night work to finish a project becomes the norm.
The unstructured day drains your energy and is frankly a waste of time. Your training gets missed too frequently, and then dropped altogether. Not only does your sporting ability suffer but your entire “out of work” life too, there is no balance.
Because your sports and fitness training is vital to you, you need to do something about this otherwise weeks and months will pass you by with no structured workouts done.
Solutions to this big problem are everywhere, all sorts of technology solutions are available to better manage your time, but often these tools become even more time consuming to use and ultimately become “busy work” too.
Having tried numerous electronic organisers from Outlook, online calendars, PDAs, phones, etc etc. I have found coming back to a basic paper scheduler to be the most powerful tool.
As a trainer it is impossible for me to see every single client when it suits them, I force them to work their schedule around me, when they realise that this is for THEIR benefit as much as mine, they discover a freedom and opportunity that they had not recognised before!
The following tips for scheduling and planning your work and workouts have been used successfully by some of my busiest clients with great success:
• Plan to check email only twice a day, just before lunch and just before you go home in the evening. Keep it turned off at all others times.
• Arrange and accept meetings only in the morning, maximum of 30 minutes
• Afternoon is for real work, do 50 minute blocks of work, then break for 10.
• Put all this in your scheduler, blocking out portions of the day for this.
• Put in all your workouts for the week 5 or 6 sessions of 20-40 minutes are enough, the morning, lunch and evenings are obvious times. Sacrifices will need to be made though to make this fit.
• Fix your sports specific training in as well, keep the training focussed and goal orientated
As obvious and as simplistic as these suggestions seem, they are extremely effective if you stick to the rules without deviation for 5 weeks. By this point, not only will you become more effective with your planning, your work colleagues will be better “educated” with how you view your precious time and respect the rules you put in place.
Give these rules a try starting immediately, go to your scheduler and be brutal with the marker pen to block out sections of your day for specific actions. Stop the rot of busy work and turn off the phone and email notifier!
Claim back control of your training schedule and make these appointments as big a priority as your work appointments. It is not easy to start with and I wish you luck.
Claim your free “Warm Up” video at http://www.corporateathletehandbook.com/. Tim Goodwin is a fitness professional from Luxembourg, training the busiest individuals to achieve amateur sporting success and a healthier body.
