TN50 #83, Change Your Perspective, Everything Counts, 8 August 2022
Hi Team,
Happy Monday and welcome to The Next 50 #83. When it comes to your MOVE (which includes exercise) – everything counts!
For 25 years, as a soldier, I was paid to move, and yes, I was even paid to workout and stay in shape. America baby! At the APEX of my military career, I was tasked with helping design, staff and build a world class training facility. This facility rivaled the best facilities in the world and I know this to be true because we toured the best facilities in the world as we were building our facility and staffing the team.
More than a few of you can relate to my situation. I have talked to dozens of people who reflect warmly on the past when they were part of a high caliber military or athletic team, you know the one with the amazing facility and human performance staff. Unfortunately to many of these folks abandoned their MOVE plan when they changed careers and now find themselves completely deconditioned and out of shape. When I ask these folks about their current workouts they glaze over and say things like, “what workout?” Now of course I make fun of them a little bit at this point and when I dig a little deeper, I find that these wonderful people forgot to change their perspective on what constitutes a movement plan so they stopped working out and in a lot of cases stopped moving all together.
Example conversation:
- Out Of Shape Dude: “I went to college on a football scholarship and played all 4 years, we trained hard and it was awesome but now I’m the newest lawyer at the firm and I have a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old and I haven’t really worked out in over 2 years.”
- Me: “Why not?”
- Out of Shape Dude: “Well, you know, I don’t have time to go to the gym everyday, like I did back in college.”
- Me: “So you’re a lawyer now, right?”
- Out of Shape Dude: “Yes”
- Me: “So lawyers need to work out like football players or not at all?”
- Out of Shape Dude: “???, Well no, well, what do you mean?”
Then we have a heart to heart about Perspective. A college football player and a new dad/lawyer’s performance requirements are different. They can be similar from a general physical preparedness (GPP) standpoint but the volume of training, time involved and equipment required are very different. (Fill in your own dialogue above, whether you were a Navy SEAL, an Olympic Volleyball Player or Army Ranger.)
Remember that world class facility I helped build and trained in?
Now, 6 years later, I execute a lot of my training in a 360 sq/ft storage room in my basement where my equipment competes with Christmas and Easter decorations and the kid’s cloths bins of hand-me-downs, I have to move equipment around depending on the workout. Of course, I also workout in the great outdoors regularly which is awesome.
So here is the last point, in a world where you have a lot on your plate and no longer get paid to work out; EVERYTHING COUNTS!
- 5-Minutes of Yoga while your coffee brews in the morning
- Walking the dogs for 1-mile between client calls
- Parking out on the edge at Lowes HW
- Walking laps in the Airport, with your 50 lbs. of luggage while you have 20 minutes before you board
- Taking a kettle bell, running shoes and a jump rope on car camping trips to airshows
- Doing 10 or 20 pushups or burpees at the end of every zoom call
How is your perspective, when it comes to your current MOVE plan? Are you a workout snob, who can only work out if you have the right facility and right amount of time? It’s either perfect or you don’t do anything? I sure hope not, and here’s a little secret: I totally use to be a workout snob, and I had to fix myself. When I moved to corporate from the military, I was missing more workouts than I was making because of “hey-you’ s” at my new job. I had to change my perspective to, getting what I could get.
I know this one is wordy so if this sort-of makes sense and you sort-of see yourself as someone who might be having trouble with changing your MOVE perspective, give me a shout, I will help you see your way through it and remember, EVERYTHING COUNTS.
As always share the post with your team or anyone who might find it useful and let me know what you think.
Have a good one, Alex
