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#133 - Fit Under 5: 15 Tips to Better Fitness in 5 Minutes or Less
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Let’s be real, you won’t always be perfect with your fitness. Busyness, stress, and life will make it difficult sometimes, but there are plenty of ways to keep momentum rolling.
In this episode, we go over 15 ways to improve your training, diet, and lifestyle in under 5 minutes.
What you’ll learn
- How to get a good workout even when short on time
- Easy ways to stay more consistent with your eating habits
- Quick wins to better manage stress and improve sleep
- And much more!
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Transcript
Introduction & Purpose
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome back to the Fit-ish Project with your host Lathan Bass, where we make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and I. We have the weekly episode for you this week. Before I get into this, as always, if you can leave a review, share this with people.
00:00:19
Speaker
That is the way that this show continues to get out to the people that need the information the most.
Quick Health Tips Overview
00:00:26
Speaker
Getting into the episode for this week, I wanted to do an episode just on some things that I have learned and things that I use quite often that I think of as sort of like quick hitters, like things that you can do in under five minutes or less that can make a pretty substantial difference in your health, in your physical health, in your mental health.
Concept of '1% Better' and Incremental Improvements
00:00:45
Speaker
Because if you've been following me for any amount of time, you've heard me say 1% better, or you've seen me write it in emails or on social media and things like that. And the reason that I like this saying so much is because so much of fitness is psychological.
00:00:59
Speaker
It's a lot of mindset stuff. And I got this concept from the book Atomic Habits from James Clear. But before I read that book, I also read a different book called The Slight Edge, which was basically a very similar story.
00:01:12
Speaker
In a nutshell, this guy within the story, he was a coach for a biking crew. So like for the Tour de France. He took over this crew and this crew was terrible. Like they were really bad and they never were competitive. They hadn't ever won any championships.
00:01:26
Speaker
And his whole whole approach when he took over this team was to focus on all the little things. He knew that they didn't have the talent right away to just jump up and be great. But he started looking at what are all the little things that I can start doing outside of just our performance that can help us to become better over time. And so he literally looked at every little thing. He started looking at how these guys were sleeping, what type of pillows they were using. He started looking at how they were washing their hands so they would get sick less. He started looking at the bike, like getting the best tires, getting the best uniform, getting the best helmet so they were more aerodynamic. He started looking at their types of training and what they were doing there.
00:02:02
Speaker
He started looking at all these different little factors, these little things that could easily be changed in order to stack up to make a big difference. To fast forward to the end of the story, over the course of a couple of years, they end up winning the Tour de France. And it was like the first time ever in their country's history.
00:02:16
Speaker
It was this big deal. And so they focused on this small little details in order to make
Consistency & Psychological Impact in Fitness
00:02:22
Speaker
big progress. And so when it comes to like fitness, A lot of things that we want, they take time.
00:02:27
Speaker
It's not like you're going to build the body that you've always wanted in the matter of a couple of weeks or a couple of months. It oftentimes will take you several years to get to a place where like you feel really good about the body that you've built or say you're like me and you needed to lose 100 pounds. That's not something that you do within the course of six months typically.
00:02:47
Speaker
It's going to take a couple of years of hard work or getting really strong or running some sort of really impressive event or doing some really crazy physical feat. Like a lot of these things take a good amount of time.
00:02:58
Speaker
If you can't find ways to be consistent and if you can't find ways to see progress, it makes it really hard to stick with things. Psychology plays a big role in this, but if you feel like you're making good progress, it is much easier to stay
Understanding and Overcoming Plateau Phases
00:03:12
Speaker
motivated. It's much easier to put in the work and actually put in like intensity within that work because you know that the things that you are doing actually matter.
00:03:21
Speaker
But on the flip side of things, let's say you have some really big goal and you are putting in this work and you feel like you're doing all the things, but you're not really seeing the results. You're not really seeing progress or even feeling like you're making progress.
00:03:33
Speaker
It's very hard to stick with something when you feel that way. I think fitness provides really good examples of this. So when we think about something like weight loss, this very easy to see. So you'll see people who they get into weight loss, they see some sort of progress pretty quickly. They drop some weight pretty quickly.
00:03:50
Speaker
But then you'll notice that maybe they hit some sort of plateau, weight loss starts to slow down. Maybe they're going through several weeks where the scale really isn't changing a whole lot. your perspective on these things makes a big difference. You could have somebody who's doing all the right things. They're doing really well. They're in a calorie deficit. They're getting their steps in. They're getting their workouts in.
00:04:09
Speaker
But for whatever reason, that scale is not moving for a couple of weeks. And if you have the wrong outlook, and if you're not focused on the right things, it can be really easy to get discouraged if you are in this position. And so you could be doing all the right things and you're about to hit a breakthrough on your weight loss but you're discouraged because you're not really seeing progress and you're not focusing on those little things or let's say you have some sort of strength goal this happens a lot as well within fitness goals because when you get in the gym right away you're going to make a ton of really good gains we call those newbie gains you get in there
00:04:42
Speaker
And because it's all new to you, your body responds really well. You start to build muscle pretty quickly. Your nervous system starts to adapt really quickly. And so you get strong very fast. But then once you get into it, those things start to slow down.
00:04:55
Speaker
You may now start to only see progress every couple of weeks. And then when you really start to get advanced, you may see progress only every couple of months in the weight room.
Power of Small Consistent Habits
00:05:04
Speaker
If I'm doing a certain lift now, because I've been lifting for so long, it may take me four weeks, six weeks, a couple of months to add five to 10 pounds to a certain lift because I'm more advanced within my training and the amount of times that it takes to see progress takes a lot longer. And so I could come in the gym and I could lift literally the same amount of weight for eight weeks in a row on a certain exercise and not see any sort of progress. Like maybe I add one rep or two reps, but like the weight is staying the same.
00:05:34
Speaker
And on some weeks I may even be feeling like I'm going backwards. Like I go in there and I put this certain amount of weight on the bar and I'm doing less reps than I did the week before or two weeks before. And if you're focused strictly on that, rather than focusing on just the little things that go into it and having the right perspective, it can be really discouraging. So with that being said, I think it's just really important to focus on some of these smaller things.
00:05:56
Speaker
It will help to keep that momentum going because you've ever been in shape, you know it's a lot easier to stay in shape than it is to get in shape. It's hard to keep stopping and starting and stopping and starting, but this is exactly what so many people do when they get in this cycle of fitness, this all or nothing mindset of either I'm completely on or I'm off.
00:06:14
Speaker
but when you step back from it and you start to look at the small things and start to focus on the small things. These are things that you can continue to do day in and day out, even when you are busy or even when you are stressed or even when life is a little bit hectic, you can still get these small things done.
00:06:31
Speaker
Realistically, these things stack up. I know sometimes you may think about some of these things and be like, that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. But giving you just some really clear examples something like stretching five minutes a day probably doesn't seem like a big deal like putting five minutes towards your mobility so that your body feels better but then you think about over the course of the week if i stretch monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday saturday sunday just for five minutes out of the day i now have stretched for 35 minutes out of the week versus stretching zero minutes out of the week. If you stretch for 35 minutes, your body is probably going to feel a little bit better on the daily versus you doing absolutely nothing.
00:07:10
Speaker
Or let's say you add something like a 20 minute walk to your day. This is just a super simple example, but you add a 20 minute walk to the end of your day or maybe to start your day. You now just add an extra 2000 steps per day.
00:07:22
Speaker
At the end of the week, that's an extra 14,000 steps that you have added within your week. If you walked a little bit more, if you stretched a little bit more, If you made some of these other little decisions consistently over time, don't you think that your health would improve quite a bit?
00:07:35
Speaker
The obvious answer is yes, it would. And so it's really important to get out of this. Like if I can't do all these huge, big things that I shouldn't do anything at all. 1% better is something that you can always continually do.
Health Tips for Training, Nutrition, and Lifestyle
00:07:48
Speaker
And when you start to stack those things and when you start to really embrace that mindset, the progress that you make and the momentum that you're able to build and the consistency, most importantly, that you're able to build up is so important to getting to those big goals that you have and just feeling better on the day to day when you're doing these little things when you feel like you're making progress when you're actually starting to see some of that progress it's super motivating and so i'm going to get into just some little things that you can do in under five minutes that can just help to make you a little bit more healthy some of these are just like one-off things like you do these one time and then you're good to go
00:08:22
Speaker
And some of these are just things that if you do them on a daily basis, they will start to add up and start to make a difference within your physical health, mental health, all that good stuff. And so I broke these down into training, nutrition, and then lifestyle. And I found five of these for each one. I just went through kind of thinking about like in my head, what are these little things that I do or these little tricks or tips that I use to help me to get a little bit of an edge and to just get that 1% better. And so going to start with training.
00:08:50
Speaker
The first one is to use time between your sets. And so what I mean by this is that if you're lifting weights and you're lifting heavy weights and you're training hard, a lot of times you're going to be resting at a minimum 90 seconds, sometimes two minutes, three minutes, maybe even a little bit longer if you're really pushing it or really lifting heavy.
00:09:07
Speaker
Within that time period, you can do certain things that are going to help you a little bit. And so a really easy one is just to walk around a little bit. You can just pace. You don't have to like briskly walk around the gym or like power walk around the gym or anything like that. But If you think about throughout the course of workout, if you're doing, let's say 15, 20 sets and you have a two minute break in between all those sets, that's quite a bit of downtime. And if you're just pacing around, even if it's at kind of a leisurely pace, you're going to stack up some steps. You could easily add in an extra 1500 to 2000 steps on your workout days from doing this.
00:09:39
Speaker
another thing that you can do within this time period is to add in some mobility i know a lot of people skip mobility and don't focus on it and don't do any type of mobility and so you can add really easy types of mobility movements between your sets and this is something that our strength coach used to do for us when i played college football and so that's kind of where i got this idea is he would program in some little things that he wanted to have us work on whether that was with our t-spine mobility or hip mobility or Anything that he just wanted us to stretch and just to get better at things that we probably weren't getting in other times throughout the day or just in our training, he wanted to address those areas. And this was a really good way that you can do that because you have to take those rests regardless. Like if you want to make the best progress, if you want to get strong, if you want to build muscle, you need to be resting a substantial amount of time in between your sets. And so
00:10:31
Speaker
If you want to, rather than just scrolling through on your phone, getting on social media, wasting a bunch of time, you can actually use these rest times to your advantage. The second thing that I'm going to mention is to get lifting straps.
00:10:43
Speaker
Lifting straps make a huge difference when it comes to lifting weights, especially within like your back training or anything that involves your grip, because eventually you're going to get to a point where your grip is the limiting factor within your exercises. And so, for example, if you're doing let's say lat pull downs, but your grip is giving out before your back muscles do, which is pretty common for a lot of people.
00:11:05
Speaker
Now you're not able to give the back the stimulus that it needs in order to gain the most muscle, gain the most strength. And so if you start to feel like you can't hang on to the dumbbell or you can't hang on to the barbell or maybe like with deadlifts or RDLs or something like that, get lifting straps because it helps a ton. I've been using lifting straps for a really, really long time ever since college and they help a lot.
00:11:26
Speaker
You can go on Amazon, you can find them really cheap. I think a lot of them are under 10 bucks. Get some lifting straps and you will notice it makes a massive difference in your back training and and in anything where you have to hold a dumbbell or barbell and that grip becomes the limiting factor.
00:11:42
Speaker
Number three, this is just a tip to get stronger literally instantly. And so when you're thinking about lifting a lot of weight, like you're getting ready to do a really hard set within your workout, something to think about that will help you get stronger right away is to think about crushing your grip as hard as you can. And so let's say you are doing a bench press.
00:12:02
Speaker
You want to squeeze that bar as if you're trying to bend that bar and break that bar. And what this does is it fires up all the muscles, not only in your hands and forearms, but it also tenses up all the other muscles in your body. So you can do this right now and you'll see the difference. Like just make a fist and squeeze really hard. And the harder you squeeze, you'll start to notice that other muscles start to fire. So you'll feel it first in your wrist and then your forearm, and then it'll kind of move up in your shoulder. Then you'll feel it in your back. And if you do it really hard, you'll so even start to feel it in your lower body, like your glutes.
00:12:33
Speaker
And obviously if you're using more muscles, you are going to be stronger. It's a super simple tip to think about, especially when you're getting ready to do a really hard set. Just think about crushing your grip and you can do this on machines. You can do this with dumbbells. You can do this with barbells. It works for really anything, but it's a super simple tip that can make you stronger almost instantly. And if you're lifting more weight, if you're attacking those sets with more intensity, you're going to see better results over time.
00:12:59
Speaker
Super simple thing to think about and implement. And so I just wanted to share that one. Number four on this list. I got five for the training. This is number four on the list. Put some sort of playlist together for your workout.
00:13:10
Speaker
I know this probably seems obvious, but there are plenty of times, and I just talked about this the other day because when I was on a run, I didn't do this. And I kept having a hit the next button, like go through the shuffle. And I kept having to hit it. And it just like kind of just threw me off a little bit on my workout versus like if I actually set a playlist or if I go to some sort of playlist that i already have created and just click it and let it run through because I know all the songs that I really like and they get me going and I feel good.
00:13:34
Speaker
My run just feels better because then you're not worried about like clicking next on the song or like scrolling through and trying to find a song. Like it just kind of gives you a better vibe and just get you in more of a groove so that you have a little bit better workout. And this is something that you can do. It doesn't necessarily have to be music. You could also use like, if you really like podcasts or audio books, this is a really good thing to do in order to get more consistent with like working out or running or cardio or any sorts of those types of things, so which is, there's a term for this. It's called temptation bundling, which is essentially you pair something that you really enjoy with something that maybe you don't enjoy as much or something that you're struggling to do. So like,
00:14:12
Speaker
If you hate cardio, getting your favorite audio book or getting your favorite podcast and listening to that while you do cardio is a way to make that more enjoyable. Or working out, like getting a really good music playlist that you really enjoy is a way to make it more enjoyable. Maybe on those days where you're really not feeling like working out, like having that playlist can be that little boost. And I think this is something that a lot of us probably do.
00:14:34
Speaker
unintentionally or like haven't really thought about but like taking five minutes to just set up a really good playlist for those days that you're just not feeling it can go a long way or finding your favorite podcast episodes and then saving those for those days where you don't want to do cardio or you don't want to work out can go a really long way and the last one for training that I have is to use what's called rest pause sets and so this is if you're short on time maybe you're in a workout in You just have to be in and out of the gym and you don't have a ton of time. This is something that I will implement and that I will use quite a bit. And so rather than doing your three sets and maybe taking your two minute breaks in between your sets and that taking maybe 10 minutes to get through one exercise, you can do what's called rest pause set. So what you're goingnna do here is you're going lower the weight just a little bit and then you're going to do a set. Let's say you do a set of 10 on
00:15:27
Speaker
dumbbell bench press. You do your set of 10 and you're only going to rest anywhere between like 15 30 seconds. And then you're gonna hop right back into it and do your next set. And so the rest breaks in between each set are going to be a lot less than they typically would be in your normal with traditional strength training. This is not something that you want to use all the time because it is a little bit more taxing on the body and you probably will have a little bit more soreness and it's little bit harder to recover from.
00:15:53
Speaker
And so you wanna use this sparingly, but if you're short on time or like you just really need to finish your workout for whatever reason, like using rest pause sets is something that you can knock out in under five minutes. You can get a lot of quality volume in, a lot of quality work in, see some good gains and not have to sacrifice cutting out parts of your workout because you're short on time. So this is something that I use a decent amount and something that you can start to implement if you are a little bit short on time.
00:16:19
Speaker
The next five are about nutrition. Number one on the nutrition list is spend five minutes making a meal plan at the beginning of the week. It never fails when I have clients fill out their check-ins and they say they had a really good week.
00:16:34
Speaker
They almost always mention something about how they plan better. And it seems crazy obvious, but doing something as simple as just taking five minutes on a Sunday to figure out what meals am I going to have for breakfast this week?
00:16:47
Speaker
What meals am I going to have for lunch this week? What meals are am I going to have for dinner this week? goes a extremely long way to helping you stay on track. And this isn't even necessarily saying that you have to prep all those meals on that Sunday, although that's obviously a great idea.
00:17:02
Speaker
But even the simple fact of just planning the things out that you're going to have is a step in the right direction to get you actually thinking about what are the things that I want to do to make sure that I'm sticking to my goals and making better choices this week.
00:17:15
Speaker
It's so simple, but it is something that can make a huge difference in staying on track versus you trying to figure out what to eat when you're stressed, when you're busy, when you're tired. Because we all know when we're in those situations, like we might have good intentions going into the week, but then work gets busy, something comes up, you have some sort of stress at home, like kids, work, like all these different things start to happen.
00:17:36
Speaker
And we know when those things start to happen, we are much less likely to stick to the original plan or stick to our original intentions. But if you Plan those things out ahead of time. If you take five minutes to just have some sort of good plan going in, you are much more likely to stick with that plan.
00:17:52
Speaker
Number two, right along with this is online grocery shopping. If you're anything like me, you don't enjoy grocery shopping. I know that some people actually do like to grocery shop. I do not. I would rather spend my time doing something else than walking around the grocery store and picking up food. And so online grocery shopping is a super simple way to save you quite a bit of time. I mean, it's literally, you can do this in five minutes rather than going into the grocery store.
00:18:16
Speaker
If you drive the grocery store, you have to walk around the grocery store, get all your groceries. drive home, do all that stuff. And that's like, could be a 45 minute to an hour process. Where here, you order your groceries, five minutes, you drive there, you pick them up, you bring them back. And in some cases, if you don't even want to drive it, you can have them delivered for an extra fee. And so you can save yourself tons of time.
00:18:35
Speaker
And this will do a couple of things for you. Like when you're not walking around the grocery store, you're much less likely to buy a lot of things that you don't need like if you've ever gone grocery shopping when you're hungry you'll notice that you probably buy things that you don't necessarily need and so this makes easier to just make better choices and when you don't have those things in your house that are very easy to overeat it makes it much easier to stick to the plan The other thing that this does is that it forces you to think about the meals that you're going to have later in that week, which I was just talking about is important. And so when you sit down to go through your groceries, you're thinking a little bit about, okay, what are the meals that I'm going to have?
00:19:10
Speaker
What types of things am I going to be eating? What snacks do I need? What high protein things do I need this week? And so it just helps you to reinforce that habit of planning a little bit more. And This is something that you can even do in in between your workout sets. So like I mentioned, you can, you know, do mobility or walk, like there's multiple times, like during a workout where I'll be like, okay, I need to get groceries today. And then I'll just do that in between sets real quick. And once you've done it, like once you've picked up your groceries or used online grocery, lot of times on websites, it'll save all those things that you buy. And typically we buy a lot of the same things over and over. So you just go through and you just select those things that you've previously bought and it makes it super simple and super quick to online grocery shop. And so I highly recommend it to just help you with staying on track, but also to save you a bunch of time.
00:19:59
Speaker
Third on the list of nutrition things is crockpot meals. Again, if you are like me and you don't really enjoy spending a lot of time in the kitchen and cooking, crockpots are the GOAT.
00:20:10
Speaker
You can throw some food in there. You can throw some proteins and vegetables, some different things like that. And you can make entire meals. You can make soups. You can make huge batches of protein in under five minutes. That's all it takes is five minutes. You throw it in there, you turn it on and you are good to go.
00:20:26
Speaker
There's lots of people out there on social media who literally have entire pages just dedicated to different crockpot meals. And this is such a huge time saver and you can cook in bulk. It doesn't take a lot of time.
00:20:37
Speaker
And then you have tasty meals and it just helps you to stay on track. I personally use my crockpot at least one to two times every single week to help me stay on track because again, I don't want to waste a bunch of time cooking. I don't enjoy really spending a bunch of time in the kitchen doing all that stuff. And so if that's you, like if you're busy, if you're stressed, if you don't want to spend a lot of time cooking, if you want simple, high protein, healthy type of meals, a crock pot is a way that can help you to do all those things, but also save you tons of time.
00:21:07
Speaker
Number four on this list is, I just labeled this morning winds. And so when I wake up in the morning, one of the things that I do right away is I will chug water, I'll get some sort of electrolytes within that water, I'll take my morning supplements, and then I'll make some coffee. And so this does a couple different things. Obviously, when you wake up, you're a little bit more dehydrated, and so chugging some water can help to clear some of that brain fog, kind of wake you up a little bit. If you get some electrolytes, it just helps with hydrating you just a little bit better.
00:21:37
Speaker
supplements. I take fish oil, I take creatine, I take vitamin D, I take magnesium. And so I just throw those things back with the water. And then with the coffee, obviously you have some caffeine in there. So if you're a person that works out typically in the mornings, like I do, caffeine can help with those workouts, help to wake you up just a little bit. And there's some other benefits, some health benefits of coffee and caffeine and things like that. And so all doing all those things takes me under five minutes.
00:22:02
Speaker
I'm getting all those things. I'm getting the benefits of the water, the electrolytes, the coffee, all that stuff. But The other thing that this does is like you're starting your day off with wins and you build that momentum to have a good day.
00:22:13
Speaker
If you've been on the opposite end of this, where maybe you wake up a little bit late, like you slept through your alarm, you're not able to go through any sort of routine, you're kind of scrambling and you're like rushing to like, so you're not late for work. You just don't feel all of that great throughout the rest of the day because you started your day off on kind of the wrong foot.
00:22:30
Speaker
And so when you can start your morning with some sort of easy win like this, it kind of sets you up and builds a little bit of momentum to have a good rest of your day. And having some sort of, whether it's a routine like this or just some other sort of little routine where you just do something for five minutes in the morning to kind of set a good intention for the day can go a long way as well.
00:22:49
Speaker
And the last thing that I have on this list for nutrition things, things that you can do in under five minutes to improve your health, track your food. I don't think that everybody needs to track their food forever. And I don't think that really is the goal for most people. I don't track my food all the time, but I will go through different periods of tracking food just to see where I'm at, how much protein I'm getting, how many calories I'm getting on average, what types of things am I eating?
00:23:14
Speaker
Are there any gaps within my nutrition and nutrients that I'm not getting just so that I can kind of stay on top of that stuff because we're so bad at estimating how many calories we're getting and the foods that we're eating and all that stuff. Like if you think about what you had, let's say Monday for lunch or last Friday for breakfast, it's really hard to think back to those things and actually know. And so we typically underestimate how many calories we're actually eating and we tend to just overthink that we're eating healthy when in reality, a lot of times we're just eating more than we think. We're not getting all the things that we need to get with protein and fiber and nutrients and all that stuff. So,
00:23:51
Speaker
Taking some time to track your food, which you can do in under five minutes a day, can help with a lot of those different things. And one thing that I tell people within regards to tracking food, especially if you have weight loss goals, some people will be like, I don't want to track food because it's annoying. Like I don't want to do it. I don't want to spend time doing it.
00:24:10
Speaker
And I don't think tracking food is necessarily for every single person. But what I say is that trading five minutes per day of tracking my food was the result of me being able to lose 100 pounds and keep that off for my entire life and literally make every single facet of my life way better.
00:24:28
Speaker
Energy is better, confidence better, physically better, going to live longer, able to do more things. Like all those things came down to me tracking food for five minutes a day. To me, that ah seems like an obvious trade-off. Like, yeah, five minutes in order to lose 100 pounds, like, absolutely, I'm going to take that trade-off every single time.
00:24:46
Speaker
Doing something as little as just tracking food for five minutes can have huge benefits in just learning more about food and being able to make better decisions, maybe losing weight, all those different things that are just going to make your life that much better.
00:25:01
Speaker
Third and final category for this podcast is just what I call lifestyle.
Improving Sleep and Mental Clarity
00:25:07
Speaker
So these are just little things that you can do in order to just help with physical, mental health, all that good stuff.
00:25:12
Speaker
Number one on the list, which I know I've mentioned on this podcast before, is to plug your phone in outside of your bedroom. This is going to improve your sleep almost instantly. And for those of you that take your phone to bed and you scroll in your bed before you go to sleep, which is a lot of people, it's probably going to feel a little bit weird at first when you keep your phone outside of the bedroom.
00:25:32
Speaker
But you will notice if you do this, you will start to get more sleep. You'll probably sleep more deeply and you're going wake up feeling more well rested. It's a super, super simple thing to do. And I know some people, they have like that anxiety with like not having their phone right by their bedside. We're all addicted to our phones. We always have them in our pockets or by our sides or we're on them like.
00:25:50
Speaker
pretty much at all times of the day. But if you can start to do this so that you can improve your sleep, it is going to make huge benefits in all the different facets of your life because sleep is such a foundational thing that just impacts everything from your the way that you feel when you wake up, your mood, your emotional regulation, how you feel physically, your recovery, like how much you're able to lift in the gym, how hungry you are, whether or not you feel more satiated,
00:26:16
Speaker
cravings that you have, all of these things with physical and mental health are linked to sleep. And so if you're getting crappy sleep or you're not getting enough sleep, every single one of those other things and more that I didn't list are going to be effective.
00:26:29
Speaker
And if you're getting good sleep, you're going to feel a lot better. You're just going to look better. You're going to feel better. Life is going to be a little bit easier. Things are just going to be better when you get better sleep. That's a super simple thing that you can do. Takes three seconds and it will improve things almost from night one.
00:26:45
Speaker
Number two is five minute journal. Mental health and physical health are very strongly linked. And I have found that with a lot of people, it's not so much like the physical things that they really struggle with. It's when like the mental things or the mindset or stress or busyness or all those things start to affect the physical things. And so like you get super stressed or super busy, you have all these things going on and it makes sticking to healthier diet harder or getting your workouts in harder.
00:27:12
Speaker
Taking five minutes just to journal out maybe some of those problems that you have, maybe some of the stresses that you have, just gets those things out of your brain and gets them on paper so that you don't have to think about them as much. When you actually have to put things into words,
00:27:25
Speaker
It helps you to start to figure out some of those problems. And so you don't have all that stuff just swirling around in your head. Because if you're anything like me and you overthink a lot, it can just go for days. But when you actually put those things down on paper, a lot of times you realize, okay, this isn't really as big of a deal as I thought it was.
00:27:41
Speaker
and it allows you to actually start to problem solve rather than just ruminate on these things and build them up a lot more and they need to be built up and so you can just put those things out of your mind you start to feel a little bit better you start to problem solve a little bit and then it allows you to do all those other things in your life a little bit more effectively so now you can hit your workouts a little bit better maybe you're not feeling as stressed so you're sticking to your diet a little bit easier and Your mental health is just feeling a little bit more clear and a little better and your mood is a little bit better. So it's like a super simple thing, but just taking five minutes to just journal for a quick second, write out your problems or whatever's bugging you can just help to help you process things and feel a little bit better.
00:28:21
Speaker
Number three on this list is to have some sort of gratitude practice. This is something that I did for years. And then the more that I did it, I started to actually see that there was some science behind it. And so having some sort of gratitude practice where like maybe on a daily or weekly basis, you just write down couple of things that you're grateful for.
00:28:38
Speaker
This is linked to people being happier, having better moods, being more satisfied with life, which seems pretty obvious, right? Like the more grateful you are, the more that you're probably going to enjoy life. And this is something that I think a lot of people overlook.
00:28:51
Speaker
We probably don't do as much as we need to, especially now with like social media and how much we are on screens. there's a lot of negative stuff out there. And our brains are quite literally wired to find the negative things. That's like how we evolved to be at the point that we're at now. And that's how we survived all these years is our brain is wired to seek out things that are negative. And so you don't take a or make a conscious effort to actually think about some of the positive things and focus on some of the positive things. It can be very easy to go down this negative spiral of always thinking about
00:29:25
Speaker
everything that's going wrong or everything that everything bad that's happening or all the problems that you have in your life. And so taking a couple of minutes to just think about these things or write these things down or have some sort of gratitude practice.
00:29:38
Speaker
can help to start to rewire your brain and help you focus on some of the positive things more. And so the way that I did this for years is like every morning i would just write down three things that I was grateful for. And it was just as simple as that. It took me like 30 seconds to a minute and I'll write those things down and then go about my day. But you could do this, write it down, think about it, text it to somebody, like whatever you want to do to use this, like find whatever works for you. But I think that it can do some really good things if you do this for a while. And I don't do it as much anymore because I feel like I've gotten into a good pattern of doing those things and I've gotten better at just thinking about some of those certain things on a regular basis and not necessarily having to use this as much. But I think just doing this for a while can help you just start to think about some of those things more often, which is going to make you feel better and just improve your health.
00:30:27
Speaker
Number four on the list is do nothing. For five minutes, just do absolutely nothing. Again, with social media, with screens, with everything that we have going on and how busy we are, it's very easy to never take any sort of downtime in getting back to talking about our brain. Our brains are not really wired that way. We're not wired to be constantly taking in all these inputs through screens, through earphones,
00:30:52
Speaker
through things going on, like we don't need to be productive or be busy 100% of the day because our brain needs that downtime to reflect and just to relax a little bit. And there's a lot of science that you can get into about why this is important. But basically, you just need to do nothing sometimes. And that is something that I know is hard for myself, that it's hard for a lot of people out there to just do nothing for a few minutes. But like, if you can start to do this a couple times throughout your day, like just do nothing, you'll notice that you just start to have a little bit more calmer demeanor, a little bit more It just has kind of a calming effect on you. And so you don't feel like you're always like in a rush or like there's always something that you need to be doing or you need to be productive 24 seven, like take some time to yourself to just do nothing. Sometimes it helps. It really does. I know like if you're the person that's like always go, go, go. like
00:31:38
Speaker
don't have any time to waste, you're probably hearing that and you're like, I can't do that. But just trust me, like it's one of those things where like the benefit of doing nothing for five minutes is going to make you so much better in those other times where you're actually needing to be productive, when you're needing to be on, when you need your brain to be working at full speed and full capacity and you need all the energy, like taking that time to yourself to just do nothing sometimes throughout the day is going to help you within the other areas of your day to just be better.
00:32:05
Speaker
If you're always just crazy spazzed out, like going crazy 100 miles an hour, start to implement some of those five minute breaks of just doing nothing.
Concluding Thoughts and Coaching Invitation
00:32:13
Speaker
And the last one on the list that I have for this list of things that can help you in under five minutes is what are called movement snacks. And so this is just like random things that you can do for your body throughout the day and just moving in different ways. And so some examples are things that I do. There's something like hanging from a bar. A lot of people have shoulder issues or back pain. And so something as simple as like hanging from a bar or
00:32:37
Speaker
Anywhere that you can hang from your house, like just hanging for 30 seconds or 60 seconds can feel really good. Things like sitting on the floor, putting your hips and your back and your ankles and knees in different positions by sitting on the floor is a good thing because a lot of us spend a lot of time in chairs, whether it's in a car or at work or on the couch or in your lazy boy, like you're in the same position, like where your hip flexors are all tight and scrunched up your backs in a certain position. And so sitting on the floor is going to force you to put your body in different positions. And that is a good thing.
00:33:10
Speaker
Something like dropping into a deep squat for 30 seconds can be helpful again for the tight hips. Like, and if you can't get into a deep squat, even more, the reason why you should start working on something like this, this could be something like Rolling out for a couple of minutes, rolling out your back, some of your muscles, just to kind of ease some of that tension.
00:33:28
Speaker
Another thing that I like to use is a lacrosse ball. And so I have one of those that I keep in my living room. And I just have kind of a corner where I keep like a roller, a band and a lacrosse ball. And like if I walk past it, sometimes I'll just stop and roll out my feet or I'll throw it in.
00:33:43
Speaker
some little nook or cranny in my back and kind of roll that out a little bit or my traps get really, really tight. And so I'll just roll those out a little bit, put it against the wall and like lean into it. And some of those little things can just go a long way into just helping you feel better on the day to day and relieving some of that tension and just getting your body into different positions. Because as the old saying goes, if you don't use it, you lose it. And We are very bad at putting our bodies in different positions. And so by just doing some of these things, some of these movement snacks and just moving your body in different ways, you can make sure that you're not losing those abilities because we've all seen those older people who they can't lift their arm above their head to even grab something or they can't even...
00:34:25
Speaker
Sit up completely straight because they've been bent over for so long They now have like this C shape in their spine or they struggle to get off the couch or they can't sit on the floor Doing some of these regular things just couple minutes per day can go a really long way to making sure that you are not losing these abilities as you get older and as you age and not having all these extra aches and pains and And so with that, that is the final one.
00:34:50
Speaker
Hopefully there was a, uh, one of these in here that you can give a try. Obviously you don't need to try to put all 15 of these into action, but finding one or two of these things, or even maybe you have some of your own that you've done in the past that you can start to bring back and start to use these can be helpful. Like Think about those 1% things that you can do, these little things that you can stack day after day that are going to make a big difference in how you feel, how you look, your approach towards fitness, your consistency, all those things, because there's so many little things that you can be doing.
00:35:20
Speaker
Fitness should never be this on or off switch. It should be more like a diet where like sometimes you are going to be more stressed or more busy and you're not able to maybe hit every single workout or be as good with your diet. But there's always small little things that you can be doing on the daily, getting that 1% better.
00:35:36
Speaker
So find some of those things and just always be thinking about ways that you can start to do those things and implement those things. And when you do that, your health, your fitness, all that stuff improves. dramatically over time and time starts to become your friend and starts to compound and all these things start to add up and then you're just in a much better place.
00:35:54
Speaker
With that being said, i appreciate you listening. If you are interested in any type of one-on-one coaching, you can always check out that link in the show notes and see if it's a good fit for you. Otherwise, i appreciate you listening and we will see you next week.