What is the cost and what do you value?
I found the recent passing of Jim Stynes heart-wrenching from a number of perspectives. There is the obvious tragedy of a young family losing a loving father, and of a community losing a philanthropist and leader, but it is another aspect of this story that I found particularly challenging.
This amazingly strong and determined individual undertook daily coffee enemas, drank his own urine (rich in nutrients apparently), meditated, exercised daily with the discipline of his sporting days, and ate a diet practically free from toxins and pollutants. And he coupled that with the best that Western medicine had to offer.
Jim Stynes’ ill-health conquered him despite the fact he exhausted every avenue he had under his control. What was heart-wrenching for me was the sheer futility of his battle. His choices were not enough to conquer the spreading cancer which makes his plight heroic, but it screams injustice.
This makes me think of a conversation I had with a client of mine today. Read the rest of this entry »
From The Silly To The SAD Season
Little people can teach us a lot about life.
At this point in time, my not-quite-two year old is wise beyond what she can express through her vocabulary. This is often a source of frustration for her, and my challenge is to efficiently decode her words so as to validate her verbal communication.
So when she looks at me with her big brown eyes on these cold mornings when I’d rather be rugged up inside; and repeatedly beckons ‘owside, owside!’; here is the interpretation:
“ Dad: due to the impending season, our opportunities to absorb daylight are becoming increasingly limited. This is compounded by our modern tendencies to stay in the warm and ride out the cold weather. For many people, it wouldn’t be unusual to achieve less than five minutes of direct outside light exposure on an average day during the colder months. They may be unaware of Seasonal Affective Disorder – a set of symptoms resulting from reduced daylight exposure. Fatigue, depression, irritability, trouble concentrating, soreness, decreased physical activity, overeating, weight gain – are all symptoms of hormonal imbalance, synonymous with those who just don’t like winter and avoid exposure to it. There also appears to be greater risk of illness due to increased uptake of recycled air and heightened exposure to germs. I’d like to avoid this, so I need you to get me outside at regular intervals during the week. Especially when the sun’s out as inside light does not suffice. So let’s go OUTSIDE!! “ (enter battering of eyelids)
Bone-on-Bone: When good engineering goes bad!
I am sure you have heard the term ‘bone-on-bone’ before. I have many times, usually in reference to the knee. Bone-on-bone refers to when the there has been significant loss of cartilage on one or both of the bones of a joint to the point that the bones are actually rubbing upon one another- this is often deemed a condition of overuse, however I would refine this condition as one of over-poor-use!
It is a common misconception that our skeleton is basically a set of bones stacked up upon one-another, with cartilage in between to reduce friction as they slide back and forth during movement. Our body, when functioning well, does NOT work like this. Read the rest of this entry »
Motivational Harness #4 – You Don’t Have To Stink!
At a recent iNform Corporate function, I had the privilege of presenting to the cream of Adelaide’s small and medium-sized business directors, and here’s what I noticed:
They all dressed REALLY nicely!
I know…insightful!
The reason I noted this, above anything else is, I was there to talk about the benefits of exercising before AND during work to enhance productivity. I was duly informed this is not practical for well-dressed, nice smelling people who wished to remain that way through the course of their workday.
So I want to throw a spin on the perception that meaningful exercise must ALWAYS make you stinky!
Biggest Losers Losing Big-Time
I don’t make a habit out of watching ‘The Biggest Loser’. Cringing and arguing with my television are not pastimes I like to entertain. I did however stumble accross an unattended televsion during last night’s episode, and my attitude towards this garabge was again vindicated.
Upon weighing in, it is revealed a contestant has lost 4.9kg of body weight in the course of one week. The reaction from his trainer, the caricature known as ‘The Commando’ is that whilst 4.9kg is pretty good going, he’s gonna have to pull bigger numbers than that is he is going to compete with the real big-time losers. There are a couple of serious problems here. One is for the message it sends our society, the second for the poor individual that is undoubtedly in for some Commando-style punishment over the coming week. Read the rest of this entry »
Motivational Harness #3 – Flow From Within
In my recent football article, here’s what I eluded to:
Is your workday structured around your physiology, or is your physiology dictated to by your workday?
On a very complex level, asleep or awake, our bodies operate in cycles. It is physiologically impossible to be firing on all cylinders for the entire day, and so the busy structure of our external world can deplete our reserve of internal endurance.
You can’t force productivity.
However you can nurture it. The coming installments will tactically address the requirements of your physiology to create an internal environment that thrives in external conditions.
It was recently presented to me that the greatest barrier to productive workdays were M&M’s! It took me a while to work out that this wasn’t a reference to tasty little treats, but rather the concept of Management and Meetings.
I once worked under a manager who, I’m sure, had a KPI to interrupt work as often as he could! He would constantly pop by for a chat, to see what I was up to, and to add new tasks to my hectic schedule. He called meetings for everything, and scheduled these – without fail – in the most inconvenient times for me. Read the rest of this entry »
Slow the ageing process with a V8 metabolic engine
March is a month of mayhem in Adelaide. With the festival coming and going and the V8′s long gone from our streets, I have sensed a great deal of fatigue in those who have tried to keep up with the frenetic pace.
It is like we need a tank of that high octane fuel to get us through to Easter!
However, with a few simple tweaks of our metabolic engine we may be able to develop a machine powerful enough to see us through these busy times with plenty of energy in reserve. Read the rest of this entry »
Learn to Run Part 4: Ask yourself ‘why?’
I will start by paraphrasing a conversation that I had with a client a few weeks ago.
Client: ‘You’re a fan of running aren’t you?’
Me: ‘I’m a fan of running well.’
Client: ‘Yeah but you think running is good for you hey?’
Me: ‘I think that running well is good for you.’
Client: ‘Sorry, I mean running is good for developing good cardiovascular fitness, isn’t?’
Me: ‘Yes, a side effect of running would be an improvement in cardiovascular fitness, but this goal shouldn’t be aspired to at the expense of the running itself’.
At this point my now frustrated and perplexed client furrowed her brow, and understanably shook her head and decided it was time to change subject. I don’t blame her.
When having conversations such as this, I am not deliberatley trying to be cryptic or clever, or just a plain old smart-arse. My response has been formed by an omnipresent error formed in people’s motivation to run.
Clients of mine have wanted to run for many reasons, such as:
- To lose weight
- To improve CV fitness
- They know it is good for them
- For competition
- For a ‘signpost goal’, like running the City-to-Bay, or a marathon so that they can say they have done it.
In these instances, running is merely a tool that is used to achieve something. I have very rarely, in fact, never been asked for assistance with running simply for the purpose of enjoying running. And that, I believe should be the primary focus when running, especially during the formative stages of your running life.
If you are using running as a modality for some purpose other than enjoyment, you will sacrifice your form, gauranteed. Running with poor form will result in increased loading of joints and unbalanced loading of connective tissue and increase the likelihood of injury development. Added to this, running poorly is also tremendously innefficient.
Running is a motor skill, and motor skills require time, repetition and accuracy if they are to become an ingrained pattern or program, and hence natural. If you have put pressure on yourself by giving yourself a time-based goal, like running a marathon in 6 months time when 5km currently is a struggle, you will not run with the cognition and feel that is required. Instead, you will be consumed by your heart rate monitor and runkeeper to the detriment of the process.
Exactly what a truly efficient running gait is is still subject to debate, but the research into this area is starting to really elucidate what it might be. More on this to follow. But in the meantime my experience tells me that making adjustments to running form- largely for the purpose of improving force transferral and shock absorption; will result in an improved perception of the running experience by the runner and hence more enjoyment. If you are comfortable with the act of running you can then use it as a tool to achieve a great number of things.
If a client tells me they want to run, my first question is ‘why?’ Ask yourself this question too.
Motivational Harness #2 – Internal World Vs. External World
Each waking day there is a b
I’m going to indulge my AFL bias, and suggest that if our work day were a football game, the match report might go something like this:
Heading into opposition territory, bottom placed Internal Physiology were always going to have a tough day up against ladder leader External Conditions. With the roof closed on External Environment Arena, the home side took early ascendancy with Caffeine and Email goaling in the opening minutes. Ringing Mobile was busy around the packs and provided further scoreboard pressure while Caffeine asserted dominance up forward slamming through a second goal before quarter time. Read the rest of this entry »
Kicking Goals!
Let me preface this by stating that your goals are yours, and yours only to choose. Also, you are free to change your goals at any point in time without any need for justification to anyone but yourself. Ok, now that is out of the way lets talk about goal attainment.
Literature on goal setting and goal attainment consistently talk about the five, seven, ten or whatever stages that exist. Words like ‘precontemplation’, ‘readiness’, ‘implementation’ and ’evaluation’ permeate this language and provide us with convient compartments to place ourselves. This means that even if you are not actually making progress, you fall into a category within the scope of goal setting, so you should feel pretty satisfied about that.
I on the other hand believe there are two states of being in regards to our goals- you are either on the path to achieving your goal, or your aren’t. I have run this through my mind a number of times, and I fail to see any other category that could exist. If you fall into the latter category, I ask you, is your goal really a goal, or is it a fanciful dream? Read the rest of this entry »
