I have a mate and every time we go to the beach he has to spend 20 minutes stretching to warm up before sport, in this case before he hits the water.
Warm Up Before Sport – Why You Shouldn’t Stretch After 40
How The Flow State Can Turn You Into A Superhuman
Ever experienced the feeling where you can do no wrong, where every action you take is perfect, where time slows down or speeds up and you’re totally in the moment undistracted by what’s going on around you or by the voice in your head? If you answered Yes you’ve experienced The Flow State. The Flow State is the ultimate human performance state, it’s often referred to in layman’s terms as “the Zone.” It’s that time when you perform perfectly. Where everything is effortless, time dilates and you are often left with a huge buzz and a sense of well being. Repeated entry into The Flow State is associated with higher levels of happiness, longer lifespans, higher levels of wealth and more career success. It’s also been calculated that you perform up to 350% better when you are in a flow state. No wonder companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft are spending millions on projects to implement more of it the workplace. No wonder professional athletes including kitesurfers are on a quest to get more flow into their performance, imagine how superhuman you’d be if you could perform 350% better every day! But how do we, who don’t have the budget of these mega corporations get more Flow in our lives and into our sports? Well, the first step is to understand how it works. Before we get anywhere near the flow state we have to go through a series of steps, the first is… The Struggle Phase. The is, as the name would suggest, the unpleasant (but absolutely necessary) part. It’s also where we’ll spend most of our time. We research, we experiment, we fail…over and over again, but each time we fail a little less. This is the time we’re practicing that new trick and wiping out every time, when we’re desperately trying to work out how the hell to master the waterstart, when we’re pissed off and disillusioned and tempted just to sack it all off and go to the pub. During this stage cortisol levels rise and our brain is emitting beta waves, the type of waves often related to problem solving. It’s frustrating, stressful and is the very reason most of us don’t really have much experience of Flow, because we give up long before we get there. Those who don’t give up come up against another problem. You see we have been conditioned since a very early age to believe old sayings such as “try, try and try again” or “if you work hard enough you can achieve anything.” And so we do, we struggle harder and harder, getting more and more frustrated, more and more stressed. We literally try to bludgeon our way into a flow state, reasoning if we just keep banging our head against that brick wall long enough we’ll break through… Unfortunately… This doesn’t work. Why? Because Flow is an intensely focused but intensely RELAXED state. The key here is the word “relaxed.” With all that frustration and stress generated through the struggle phase there is…
Why You’re (Probably) Going To Get Injured [And How Not To]
Conventional wisdom tells us, when you pull or tear a muscle that the muscle was too weak and the solution therefore is to build it up stronger. I propose something different…
2 Reasons Why The Odds Are Stacked Against You Ever Losing Weight
There are 2 major industries heavily invested in ensuring you fail to lose weight and certainly don’t want you to remain thin if you do manage it.
? My Hopeless Day Of Surfing With No Waves
What the hell were we doing? Here I was, lying on my kite board, on a totally flat ocean, freezing my ass off, attempting to surf.
What happens if you do no exercise for 3 years
I’d done no exercise for 3 years….In that time I’d lost weight and gained back my 6 pack, I hadn’t been ill the entire time, I had loads more energy and I was in a constant good mood.
Stuck Indoors & Worried About Snacking Too Much?
At the moment I know a lot of people are pretty worried about the effect being stuck indoors is going to have on their waistline. Let’s face it all this sitting around and boredom snacking isn’t going to make us any slimmer. There is however a more insidious threat to our waistlines which no one’s really talking about… This is, for many of us, one of the most stressful times of our lives. You may or may not be working, but you’ll certainly be worried about loved ones and what the future holds in general. Now stress itself is one of the biggest contributors to weight gain there is. On a simple (and slightly oversimplified) biological level, stress raises cortisol levels, which raises blood sugar which causes you to store more food as fat. So we want to avoid it as much as possible if we are to stay trim. Now, most of us, when we think of stress in this time will think about the financial stress, the psychological stress caused by the uncertainty of our situation… But stress comes in many forms. Being indoors itself is stressful to our system. Wifi, lack of sunlight, lack of contact with the earth, lack of nature, lack of forced temperature adaption, mould in our houses, social isolation, loneliness, lack of laughter and too much screen time all contribute to the underlying stress levels felt in the body, even if they are only subconsciously felt… And the body only has one response to stress: Dump cortisol, raise blood sugar and store fat… So anything we can do to lower stress levels in this time is going to do both our mental health and our waistlines the world of good. Luckily for us there are some things you can do right now, really simple things which will help you to control stress levels, feel better and have a positive impact on your waistline. SHOWERS Now I’m not for one minute suggesting that your not maintaining your daily hygiene but there is one thing you can do when you’re in the shower which can really help you reduce stress and boost your immune system at the same time (get your minds out of the gutter gents!). The benefits of cold water have been known for a while now. Cold water exposure leads to the creation of an increased amount of white blood cells, those internal warriors who protect you from viruses. But it also has a up regulating effect on our parasympathetic nervous system…that part of the nervous system which (quite literally in this case) chills us out and de stresses us. So at the end of your shower just turn the temperate all the way down for 30 seconds before you hop out. 30 seconds is enough to reap the benefits and I guarantee you’ll feel amazing afterwards. A word to the wise. The first few times you do this it may feel pretty unpleasant but the body reacts very quickly and within…
Keep engaged, productive and healthy (after 40) whilst you’re working from home.
At this time you must be wondering how you can keep yourself productive, engaged and healthy when working from home (and most likely watching way too much Netflix 😉 ) The sad fact is that for many people these latest developments will lead to a downturn in their health and an increase in waist size as they move less, eat more and lack stimulation and social contact. But it doesn’t have to be that way. For some people these next few weeks will be the opportunity they need to turn their life around. No where else could this be truer than the area of sleep. In the Western world we are chronically sleep deprived and it has a HUGE impact on our daily performance, our health and how much juice we get out of life. Now suddenly removed from the distractions of late nights at the office or later nights at the bar we finally have the chance to get our heads down and catch up on our full quota of sleep we’ve been missing for so long, BUT… Many people will emerge from this period actually sleeping worse… Will develop insomnia or some other awful sleep disorder, which may well impact their lives negatively for many years to come. Why? Our circadian rhythm, the natural cycle or internal clock within our bodies which tells us when to wake up and be energised and when to be tired and go to sleep is irrevocably linked to sunlight and the day night cycle. Being as we are now stuck indoors for most of the day with even less exposure to sunlight than usual the natural receptors which signal our bodies which hormones to release at what time to either wake up us or slow us down are going to struggle to realise when it is day and when it’s night. This will be compounded by the fact that most peoples natural daily rhythms will shift. A lot of us will lie in bed longer in the morning simply because we’re bored and have very little motivation to get up and get going. Wake up (and get up) time are huge signallers to our internal clock of what time it is and adjusting it further wrecks our circadian rhythm as another of the largest signallers governing our internal clock is thrown into chaos. So what can you do? 1) First thing in the morning open your door and just stand in the sunlight (preferably getting some on your skin) for 5 – 15 mins, with your eyes open, without sunglasses or sun cream. That will be enough to set the bodies internal clock and get the right hormones moving at the right time. 2) Make sure you get up at the same time every day. Wake up time is even more important that the time we go to bed. No matter what time you hit the hay, if you keep your wake up time consistent your internal clock will stick more tightly…
