6 Ways Exercise Boosts Productivity In Your Career

When you are trying to lose weight or focusing on another health goal that generally involves exercise, finding time to show up for your workouts can turn out to be challenging enough. So if you have a career (or a business) that you have been working with in order to build this; it can turn out to be double whammy, as it is common that you put your work time ahead of your exercise time. Given here are a few reasons why you might want to reconsider.

Exercise keeps you alert and focused

Here is a quick lesson; exercise helps to increase the blood flow in the brain. And that sharpens the awareness. According to a study conducted by Jim McKenna from the University of Bristol, once an individual finishes exercising, the work performance is consistently seen to be higher when compared by the better time management and improved mental sharpness. A client of mine recently came across this experience during a long week leadership development program. And as a part of the program participants including the client started the day to day exercise, yoga, walking, or strength training.

Increased energy

The more and more you move, the more energized you feel. Regular physical activity helps in improving your muscle strength, boosting up your endurance, giving you the energy you need to think clearer and come up with new and different ideas. A good 15 minutes of moving around even just around the living room makes your body produce more and more energy on a cellular level.

Exercise improves mood

Need an emotional lift? Or need to blow of some steam after a stressful day? Having a work out at the gym or a brisk thirty minutes' walk can help you deal with it at ease. Physical activity helps you stimulate various brain chemicals that may help you feel happier and relaxed. You also continue to feel better in terms of your appearance when you continue to exercise on a regular basis, boosting up your confidence and improving your self-esteem.

Tracking and limiting how much time you have been spending on tasks

You might think like all others that you are pretty good at engaging how much time you have been spending on various tasks. However, research studies conducted suggests that only 17% of the people around are actually able to accurately estimate the passage of time. A tool like Rescue Time can help the employees and the other individuals by letting them know exactly and how much time you will wish to spend on daily tasks, including social, email, word processing and apps.

Stress management

Regular exercise has generally been shown to decrease the overall levels of tension, improving sleep and boosting self-esteem in an individual. It is thought that even five minutes of an aerobic exercise can stimulate the anti – anxiety effects. If you feel that you do not have enough time to put in a full cardio work out each day then even incorporating short bursts of activity in your daily life can turn out to be beneficial. You can even try out a 15 minute walk during the lunch time, or just take the stairs rather than the lift. If you don’t want to exercise alone then you can also join a fitness centre with your friend or colleague.

Just say no to meetings

Meetings are generally considered to be one of the biggest time sucks around, and yet somehow we continue to book them without asking any questions, attend them and invite others. Everybody inevitably continues to complain about them. According to Atlassian, the average office worker generally spends more than 31 hours each month during unproductive meetings. Before booking your next meeting, do ask yourself if you can accomplish the same goal or tasks via email, phone or web based meetings, and whether they will be slightly more productive enough in the long run.

About the Author

Michael is the Marketing Manager at Ampliz, specializing in email and marketing database management software, editing blogs, case studies, and guides. Beside work he is a fitness freak and a Marathon runner. He tries to make the world just a bit more pleasant enough by working on strategies that would help them prevent and eliminate spam in terms of email marketing.

So what are your best work productivity related tips? What other tips have you come across in order to maximize your own productivity at work or in the office. Do leave your thoughts and comments below. STAY STRONG!

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High Fat Diets: Just Another Fad

Are high fat diets really the best way to lose weight that the world has seemingly just discussed? The answer is a resounding NO! Trends come and go. There was a big anti-fat movement years ago. Now it has changed to the anti-carbohydrate movement. Both movements (or trends, rather) promised better health and weight loss. Before you jump on the anti-carbohydrate bandwagon, consider a few of the points below/

Carbohydrates are macro nutrients

There are 9 calories in 1 gram of fat, 4 calories in one gram of carbohydrates and 4 calories in one gram of protein. For those of you who would like to know, there are 7 calories in 1 gram of alcohol (and no, this is NOT a macro nutrient, wink wink).

Carbohydrates are good for you

Carbohydrates are good for you and should not be banned from our diets. This excludes sugar (the simplest carbohydrate), which should be brought to an absolute minimum except for fruits and vegetables or used to spike blood sugar before or after exercise. Our bodies break carbohydrates down for energy faster than fats and proteins. They are a great way to fuel up before exercise and refuel straight afterwards to put the body in recovery (muscle building) mode as soon as possible. Carbohydrates are also broken down into glycogen which is stored (along with other places like the liver) in the muscle, which attributes to their size. The more glycogen a muscle contains, the larger it is. Carbohydrates are not bad, but western diets almost always contain too much of them. The problem is therefore not carbohydrates, but the proportion in which they are consumed.

Fats are good for you

Fats are not bad for you either, except for plant oils used in extreme heat like deep frying. When plant oils are super-heated (like they are when they are used to fry things), they become very unhealthy for the human body. They contribute to unhealthy cholesterol levels, create unhealthy heart environments, increase risk of diabetes and can lead to obesity. Fats are more calorie-dense than carbohydrates but take longer to be broken down in the body for energy. Fats also keep you fuller for longer than carbohydrates. Fats are great in the morning because they take longer to break down so that you feel fuller and it therefore takes longer before the body starts to hunger for more calories. Because the body craves less for longer as a result of a fatty breakfast, it learns to break down its own fat for energy instead of relying on the quicker energy release from carbohydrates.

Protein is good for you

At the risk of being doctor obvious; protein is good for you, too. It cannot be stored in the body (except for in muscle mass, a storage we do NOT want to tuck into) and therefore should be accompanied by fats in the morning, when your body has not had any protein for hours of sleep. Your body needs protein to grow and build your body and muscles. Protein is also beneficial straight after your workout so that your body can recover and start the recovery/rebuilding process. High protein, low fat and low carbohydrate diets are okay for short periods of time to drop fat quickly, but can't be sustained for long periods of time because your body will start to break down muscle for energy.

Proportion

As you should be able to see from the three points above, the key to a healthy diet which supports your goals is proportion. There should be a healthy balance between all three macro nutrients. Focus on eating fats and protein in the morning, protein and carbohydrates around (before and after) exercise and a balance of all throughout the day, depending on your goals.

Price

This is my personal guess as to why trends are often swaying between high carbohydrate and high fat diets. Unfortunately, protein is more expensive than both carbohydrates and fats. Furthermore, the healthier foods are more expensive than the less healthy foods. This makes sense when you look at how well carbohydrates that trick the body into thinking that it is a protein are sold. Examples of these are beef and chicken flavored chips and noodles. People might be satisfying their cravings for more protein with cheaper versions which are actually carbohydrates or fats.

Calories

The best way to drop weight is to drop total calories consumed to levels below expenditure (the bodybuilding industry has been saying this for years). You can do this by increasing caloric expenditure, decreasing calories consumed (through diet) or a combination of both. It is important for optimum health to keep a good balance between carbohydrates, fats and proteins without completely avoiding any of them.

The real culprits to avoid are sugars, super-heated plant oils, additives and processed foods; not entire macro nutrients like carbohydrates or fats. Keep everything in balance and focus on having fewer calories than what is expended instead of excluding a food group that your body needs. STAY STRONG!

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The Garry Bodybuilding Workout Program: The Most Intense Muscle Building Program Ever

This is the most intense workout that I have ever tried out myself. Due to its high intensity, this program is not recommended for people are just starting out or who are relatively new to training. These people should start off with these programs instead. Newcomers should start off with the first program to get their bodies into the idea of breaking down and rebuilding muscle. Once you are ready, you can progress to the second program in the above link, which is similar to what most bodybuilders do.

The Garry workout program was supposedly designed for advanced bodybuilders whose muscles are already used to intense training. It is used to boost muscle growth and blast through a plateau for a limited period of 2 months for accelerated muscle growth. The high intensity of this program lends itself to the fact that it can't be sustained for too long. Since you are working till failure on every set, for many sets, it takes a toll on your nerves and central nervous system.

Since this is a great shocking technique, muscle growth is boosted through this period as the body tries to adapt to the extreme stimulus. As a result of the strain it places on the joints, energy systems and metabolic system, the program should only be followed for a very short time before switching back to normal training.

You should only do this program when on your bulking phase. Restricting calories on a program of this intensity could lead to muscle breakdown. Make sure that you are getting enough calories from a good bulking diet (click here to build your own).

How the program works

The program incorporates German volume training (high reps, high sets), limited recovery time per set and repeatedly forcing muscles to failure, driving them to complete exhaustion with each workout. The goal of this program is to enforce rapid hypertrophy by shocking the body into accelerated growth. This takes its toll on the central nervous system as well as the metabolic system over time, which is why it is advised that beginners, people with injuries or other medical conditions and people who have already overtrained do not try this type of program. The body starts showing a negative response (over-training) if the program is followed for longer than 2 months.

Program rules

The program runs for 6 days a week

The program is in a 6-day split, focusing on one muscle group per day. All major muscle groups are worked in the program, but through only one exercise. The only rest day is day 7. You need to follow the program fully, not cutting out a single day.

Perform only one exercise per day

Do only one exercise per day, excluding a warm up and cool down. This is shown below. You can only add warm-up and cool-down exercises but do not stress the body more than what is described below. I would personally recommend a cardio-style warm-up and an exercise-specific warm-up, depending on the exercise for that day. Don't do any other weighted exercises as a warm up and make sure that your muscles aren't fatigued at all before the exercise. The point is to exert the most out of the muscle in the shortest amount of time. 

Resist the temptation to do any isolate or additional exercises. Try this out for a few weeks and you will see that the exercises here are more than enough for growth.

  Perform every set till failure

You need to work until complete failure with every set. Forced reps are allowed. I did mine until I couldn't move the weight at all. If you can do another rep, you're not done.

You must follow the prescribed times

Every set has a resting period of exactly 30 seconds before the next one, with the exception of squats and dead lifts having 1 minute rest intervals. Do not rest longer or shorter than this between sets. This maximizes short-term fatigue.

Keep doing more sets until failure until you cannot perform a single full rep 

This blasts your muscles and will test your muscular endurance, but keep on performing sets of the exercise until you cannot do a proper repetition with the right form. As you can see below, it might take a loooot of sets before you fail to do a single rep.

The program

Day 1: Squats
(60 second rest in between sets) (Until failure) (E.g. 15-7-6-4-4-4-4-2-1)

Day 2: Standing Calve Raises
(30 second rest in between sets) (Until failure) (E.g. 15-15-15-14-14-1-1-1-10-9-8-5-5-5-3-2-2-2-2-1) 

Day 3: Russian Twists
(30 second rest in between sets) (Until failure) (E.g. 20-20-20-18-16-14-10-7-7-7-6-5-4-2-2-2-1-1-1)

Day 4: Deadlifts
(60 second rest in between sets) (Until failure) (E.g. 12-11-10-10-10-9-8-7-6-6-5-5-5-5-4-2-1-1)

Day 5: Dumbbell Bench Press
(30 second rest in between sets) (Until failure) (E.g. 12-10-8-6-4-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-1)

Day 6: Pull Ups
(30 second rest in between sets) (Until failure) (E.g. 25-25-25-23-20-19-27-17-14-12-11-9-6-5-4-3-3-3-3-2-2-2-1)

Day 7: Rest

Additional notes

• Use dumbbells for the bench press exercise because the intensity of this program could easily get a bar stuck on your chest.
• The workout goes very quickly (It took me less than half of my usual workout routine to complete).
• I struggled to do the squats till failure. On most occasions I ended up resting for longer in the middle of my sets.
• My calves exploded on this routine. I use this kind of principle for my calves often because of that.

Give this program a try and tell us about your experience in the comments below. STAY STRONG!

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