My alarm would go off at 6am with the
notification “Get up and train!”. Slowly, I would roll out of bed and proceed
to put my sport gear on for my morning run. Most of the time it was still dark
outside.
Feeling like a character out of The Walking Dead, I would make my way to
the front door, put my headphone buds in my ear and turn Till I Collapse from Eminem on.
The first few meters of the run were always
the worst, as my legs were stiff and I had to get used to the ice-cold air
blowing against my face. Looking back at those days, I don’t know why I did the
daily running. Was it for the cardio, the fat loss or just general health? All
I know is that it was a pain in the ass. Only now do I realize however, that it
wasn’t worth it as far as health and longevity are concerned.
Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean you
should move less, quite the opposite actually. You should be moving more, and
running can definitely be a great addition to your health and longevity
protocol.
All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t over
do it! Many people will sacrifice sleep and time spent with their families just
to get another workout in.
There is a time and place for workouts, but
they shouldn’t interfere with other important activities that are equally
essential for your health (sleep, social interactions with friends and family).
Just make sure you’re leading a balanced lifestyle.
Many people would benefit a lot from
skipping a night out with their friends and instead doing a workout in the gym.
Others however, spend enough (maybe even too much) time training, and would
benefit by letting loose and going out every once in a while. The key is to
lead a balanced life, as this is the healthiest for you and the people around
you.
On top of leading a balanced life, you
should tailor your training towards your goals. When I was doing my morning
runs, my goal was in fact gaining muscle. To accommodate that goal I would have
been better of sprinting 1-2 per week. Not only would this have been more
effective at helping me reach my goal, it would’ve given me more time to sleep
or work!
Tailor
Your Training Towards Your Goals.
The intensity and frequency of your training
solely depends on your goals and what your body is capable of. For some reason,
workout regimens for the average Joe have turned into a monumental schedule
similar to that of a professional athlete.
However, that in itself isn’t the problem.
Depending on what your goals are, you might have to train twice a day, five
days a week. When I was getting ready for my amateur kickboxing fight, I was
training hard throughout the entire week, taking one to two days off.
At the moment I’m only training a couple of
days per week, as I’m doing a lot more “academically-based” work. It always
depends on your goals.
Most people want to maintain a healthy body
fat percentage, be decently fit and have a reasonable amount of muscle mass. To
achieve this, you won’t have to kill yourself in the gym 7 days a week. Instead
of harder training, you should focus on working out smarter.
Circuit training, sprinting and heavy
compound lifts are just a few ways to get in great workouts. Trust me, if you
implement these training methods in your regimen, you physically won’t be able to workout more than of 4
days a week. But more on exercise later.
Overtraining. Recovery is
underestimated. As far as exercise goes, the world we live in is rather black
and white. Either you’re not exercising (enough), or you’re overdoing it. There
are few in between who are doing it just right.
The best workout regimen will vary greatly
depending on what your goals are. Full time athletes will do different
training, at different intensities and in different amounts compared to an
entrepreneur who’s goal is to maintain his or her health. Thus, it is crucial
that you clearly define what you want to achieve with your physical exercise
and build on that.
An athlete’s body will be more capable of enduring
all the training, as their body has gotten used to it and they have more time
to recover. If you haven’t done exercise since high school, it would be a good
idea to start slowly. Otherwise, the chances of getting injured are
significantly higher.
How To Tell If You’re Overtraining.
Fortunately, there are various ways to tell
if you’re over trained. Common symptoms include chronic fatigue, poor sleep
quality, chronically elevated heart rate and loss in appetite. For me,
monitoring my heart rate variability and analysing my sleep have been the most
reliable ways of gauging my body’s physical state.
1. Heart rate variability app. Heart rate variability refers to the time
change between each individual heartbeat. A high heart rate variability (HRV)
means that your body is reacting optimally to micro changes in your
environment. This “primed” state is where you want your body to be in (unless
you’re an athlete 2-3 weeks before competition, however that’s a topic for
another day). A low HRV occurs when your body is stressed and doesn’t react
optimally to minor changes in your environment.
Thus, monitoring your HRV will help you
know if you’re stressed (physically and mentally) or not.
You can monitor your HRV with different
devices, but I use the app “HRV4Training”, which gives me reliable information
on how intense I should train that day. Using your smartphones camera lens, the
app can detect your HRV when you place your finger on it for a minimum of 1
minute.
It’s best to measure your HRV daily and at
the same time (preferably in the morning).
Over time, you’ll see what your average HRV is. If your HRV is getting
lower, that might be a sign for you to take a day off or train at a lower
intensity.
2. Sleep monitor app. The other self-tracking device I use to gauge
my physical state is the “Sleep Cycle” app. I’ve mentioned this phenomenal app
in various blog posts, as I couldn’t live without it. It may well be the number
one self-tracking app on the market. For only $3, the app analyses your sleep
and wakes you up in your lightest sleep phase in a set time frame (e.g. between
6:00-6:30 am). Furthermore, Sleep Cycle shows you a graph from your night of
sleep as well as the percentage of quality of that night.
If you monitor your sleep quality over a
longer period of time, it will be easier to detect patterns of poor sleep.
Using the apps “sleep note” function, you can readily detect the things you do
and eat throughout the day that have the largest impact on your sleep quality.
If you increase your training intensity and/ or volume and experience a chronic
decrease in sleep quality, you may want to think twice about your new training
regimen.
Your
New Training Schedule.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
I’m not telling you to just exercise
less and move as you did before. Movement is paramount to health, longevity,
success and overall happiness.
The main problem I see nowadays is that
people work at a desk all day and then hit the gym and lift weights. No
stretching, no walking, no bodyweight exercises, no foam rolling and no warm
up. This lifestyle in which you are sedentary for the majority of your day and
then push your body really hard is a recipe for injury and impaired health.
Research has shown that 1-2 hours of
physical exercise per day will not undo the damage done by sitting!
Fortunately, the issue of sitting too much can be side stepped by setting a few
precautions in place.
1.
Set up a standing desk or
treadmill desk at home or at your office. This will allow you to spend a lot
more time on your feet.
2.
Research has shown that 52
minutes of work followed by 17 minutes of break is the best work schedule.
Whether this is your schedule or not, take breaks every 30-60 minutes and wind
down. Walk, do bodyweight exercises or stretch.
3.
Do low intensity and low impact
movement daily. Go for walks, ride your bike and get out in nature. If you feel
like this is time wasted (which it isn’t), listen to informative podcasts and
audio books or spend time just thinking.
4.
Install a gym in your office at
work or at home. This allows you to spend time otherwise wasted working out. Do
a few kettlebell swings, pull-ups, bodyweight squats, curls etc. in your breaks
and get your blood circulation going. I’m overcoming my biggest weakness,
pull-ups, by doing a couple every time I walk past my pull up bar situated at
home.
5.
Spend 5-10 minutes every other
day doing self-myofascial release. This is best done by foam rolling as well as
tennis- and golf- ball massaging. Increased flexibility and diminished chronic
physical pain are just a few benefits of regular self-myofascial release (SMR).
The following YouTube links lead to videos showing you how to do SMR properly
and specifically to fight the affects of sitting as well as pain reduction
techniques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSSDLDhbacc
6.
Workout 2-4 days a week. As
mentioned earlier, these training sessions should be a mixture of heavy lifting
(e.g. deadlifts, squats and rows), circuit training (e.g. rounds of push ups,
kettlebell swings, jump squats…) and sprinting. Additionally, I’d recommend you
do physical activities you actually enjoy doing. For me this would be martial
arts training and light running. Other people enjoy cycling or playing
basketball. The point is that you find an activity you enjoy doing to let off
some steam. If you haven’t got a sport you like doing, try a martial arts
training session. It’s fun, tiring and you’ll learn how to defend yourself.
The 6 principles I outlined above are
something I really want you to experiment with. It’s a healthier way to
exercise and I find it to better suit most peoples daily schedule.
So give it a shot and report back your
experiences in the comments section, I appreciate your feedback!
(picture above: http://www.acefitness.org/acefit/healthy-living-article/60/493/what-does-overtraining-mean/)
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