Monthly Archives: August 2010

Acheive Personal Records Every Day

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In the weight lifting world you’ll hear the acronym PR all the time. PR is of course: “Personal Record”. I’ve really come to embrace PRs, not just in my weight lifting and exercise, but my overall life. I love to set Micro-PRs for things like shortest time to do a certain task in my job. Overall it makes me better and more efficient, and I can push those out over time and get progressively better in my career.

I also try to keep an eye on my negative PRs. I like to keep a lid on my longest time between gym visits, or the longest time before visiting my parents or other family. I’m also not great at billing my customers, so I keep an eye on that too. Constantly improving your positive personal records and keeping negative ones in check will consistently improve your life.

PR Every Day

Adam Glass came up with the Twitter hashtag #PREveryDay. Basically you can tweet your personal record that you set for that day and keep a record of your constant improvement.  There is even a twitter bot that you can follow that will tweet out everyones PRs based on that hashtag. It’s very motivational to follow that account, because you can see the ways in which others are making perpetual progress.

The Diet Solution: Start Burning Fat Now

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I’ve been trying out a new program for dieting recently to really push my weight loss. They have a video to start things out that gives you a ton of information. Basically they promise typical results of 3-10 pounds in your first week. I’ve definitely done that since starting. They also say that if you change your lifestyle to follow the whole program, you can keep the weight off for the long run.

They explain sugars, carbs, fats, and other chemicals that affect your ability to lose fat. I have been working out on top of all of that too. The biggest pull-away I have from the whole thing is to watch the ingredients on the food you’re buying. They have some pretty great recipes too. The other big take-away from the program is that if you make positive changes to your life, those are positive changes and constantly striving to eat better will help you lose fat.

They have a ton of free resources, which include articles and videos. I was totally blown away when I actually got into the actual program. The great thing about actually being a part of the program is the motivational aspects of working directly with Isabel and have someone actually driving your success.

What’s really cool is they’ll give you your money back if it doesn’t work. Go give it a look. I implore you to at least watch the first video and check out the free resources, because those are extremely insightful in themselves.

Exercise isn’t Just Going to the Gym

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My wife and I were talking the other day about her lack of attendance to the gym. She doesn’t want to go anymore, which was quite disappointing to me at the time. We were both going to try and get fit and now she was bailing on me. That was about a week ago, and today, she had been doing work around the house and while we were telling each other about our days, she said something inciteful.

She said: “I got just as much of a workout around the house today as I would have if I had gone to the gym.” I had been thinking about doing a post about sports and how exercise doesn’t have to be the monotony of going to the gym, and that statement really got me thinking about it a lot more.

There are tons of great alternatives to going to the gym that can be a lot more fun too. I’ve taken the time to brainstorm just a few different categories of non-gym exercise.

Sports

I like to play basketball and volleyball with my friends. They’re great group sports and can be a ton of fun. You can also play American football or soccer too. Basketball and soccer are great cardio workouts, while football can be great for strength and sprinting. Volleyball or baseball are great coordination sports, helping you improve reaction time and hand-eye coordination.

Often times if you’re playing fun sport you can be “working out” for hours at a time with little to no concept of how long you’ve actually been doing it. I find it quite addictive to play volleyball myself. Try to periodically substitute one of your exercise days with a group sport of some sort. If you don’t have any friends that want to participate in a group sport, you could do something like golf as well. You could also look to your local community. Many communities have baseball, soccer, or rugby teams.

Manual Labor

I’m from Vermont, so we have large lawns and a lot of people burn wood for heat in the winter. Stacking and splitting wood is one of the best strength workouts I can think of. You can actually keep track of personal records in how fast you can split or stack specific amounts of wood.

I also prefer to mow my lawn with a push mower instead of a riding one, because walking the lawn and pushing the mower is a great cardio work out as well. I try to mow my lawn at a fast pace, but it’s hard, because if I go too fast the lawn doesn’t look good. When you mow the lawn by hand, you’ll be saving money and getting healthy at the same time!

Commuting to Work

I can’t say that I’ve ever done this, because it scares me a bit to be without my car, but I’ve often times though of riding a bike to work. It’s about five miles, so I would be chalking up about ten miles a day in exercise on a cycle. The trip home would be up a mountain too, about 500 ft. in elevation change!

The Point

The point is, we are exercising every day, or at least have the opportunity to. It’s not hard to find little ways to get a little bit more fit throughout your day. Tomorrow think to yourself periodically about the things you just did. Could you do them differently to get a little bit more of a workout? Share your thoughts.