Why you should strength train and 1 tiny habit to start your day with
Good morning everybody, it's day three of the challenge. Now are you feeling that your days are feeling longer because we're like doing more things and we're focusing on one day at a time or is that just me? I feel like the days feel longer, the weeks are longer with more life in them. Does that make sense? More moments in them.
Speaker 1:So I think we make most of the days. When you just have a day where you literally do nothing, go to work, go home, lay on a couch and watch TV, what really is happening that day and essentially it is less time being spent, like less moments. So then maybe moments is what we really mean by making the most of our lives. So just, you know, keep going with these days and these weeks. Feel like the more we can try and do, obviously we need to do something what Bruce Lee and Shannon Lee and B Water my friend call skillful frustrations.
Speaker 1:It's pushing yourself just enough that you're growing from these kind of frustrations. Oh, I've gotta get up a bit earlier to fit this in. Oh, I've got to get my steps in when I just want to sit down. All these things, don't push it too far but we've to push it a bit. And I feel like that's what we're doing where we're trying to fit a few more things in you and there.
Speaker 1:There was a really good strength seminar last night with David, awesome guy, very knowledgeable and spoke about the benefits of strength training, you know, for women especially, great for, bone mineral density because when women get to menopause, an estrogen flies down. Your bones are weaker essentially because of calcium. So strength training is gonna kind of in a sense, try and negate some of that. You'll have stronger bones. It makes you you know, the studies are clear.
Speaker 1:You you live longer in in a sense when you when you're stronger. Less chance of injury, less chance of health risk. Right? If you get COVID as well as David was saying, you're you can deal with it better, less hospitalization risk. There's an interesting study that again I'll post a link about helping older people with Alzheimer's and dementia.
Speaker 1:In some cases slow it right down and and actually reversing some parts of it. I know I'm not too cleared up on that science, but the study was saying that the improvements were remarkable and lasted a long time afterwards. And it's all about David Hussein. When you lift weights and you do full body, your brain is essentially sending signals to every part of your body, to your bones, and to your muscle to move, to use, to to do something. And when we don't do strength training and we don't really do any resistance training full body, you know, sometimes we might not activate the glutes for years properly.
Speaker 1:Do you I mean? Like it's quite difficult to activate your glutes when you're training properly, right? And the same as activating other muscles, know, some muscles in the back and all that. And you think about going through life not really putting your body to work in our sense and making yourself feel strong and powerful and utilizing the muscles you have as a human being. And you don't do that, of course you're not gonna feel alive as possible.
Speaker 1:You're essentially dormant. Yeah, when we don't walk and we're sitting on an office chair all the time. I'm sitting down right now, I need you to get standing up. Look, I've got a standing desk. Come on.
Speaker 1:You can hear it? It's coming up. Yep. Okay, so basically as this comes up, we wanna really see our body as a it's it's it's a machine in a sense, and we wanna make sure it's kind of lubricated and being used. You know, anything you leave to leave for a while without, you know, using, it kind of dies off.
Speaker 1:Cars, computers, all these things. If they don't use them and lubricate them and fuel them properly, they just die. So I feel a lot of people who do strength training, especially people who did the last challenge, you end up feeling strong, you end up feeling more in tune with your body. You feel strong, in tune with your body, you've added some muscle, you've done some different types of training, you've got progress in a different way now where you're getting stronger and using more weight as opposed to just looking at your body weight. All the other health benefits of strength training for mental health, physical health, and just yeah, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:So guys, if you're not doing a strength training, do highly recommend you do the three strength trainings a week. And David was mentioning, you know, the government guidelines or the guidelines by the WHO is a hundred and fifty minutes a week of moderate to rigorous exercise, and the strength training session will take about thirty minutes, that's ninety minutes. So then you've got sixty minutes left. And the runs will be about twenty minutes each. So in really you're bang on in tune with the guidelines if you're doing strength training and cardio.
Speaker 1:Okay? So the running. And again another study showed as well if you do cardio or like walking 10,000 steps six to 10,000 steps a day can be counted towards this cardio thing because it's moving, walk with a bit of pace, and that covers it. Right? But if you wanted to make sure of, doing the car the runs and the strength training was the best combination for decreasing all cause mortality in this study, which is interesting.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, training. Again, in New Zealand, believe, or maybe it's Canada, maybe both of them, the first prescription as I call it for people who feel they're feeling depressed and stuff is exercise. So they go well, prescribing you exercise x times a week. And some people obviously when you've got severe depression and you can't even and you know, you're stuck inside, you can't even move, then that's gonna be a different, approach. So we talk about the kind of moderate levels here.
Speaker 1:We can't cover every case. But in terms of moderate levels of depression, anxiety, all this stuff, doing exercise now is considered like, in a sense, better in the long term, 100 than medication and stuff like that. Because, you know, when you build up strength training, do it for the rest of your life. You get stronger, you get more resilient, you get more muscle mass, and, you know, better bone muscle bone mineral density, all this stuff. So again remember now exercise isn't just to burn calories.
Speaker 1:Exercise can transform your body and mind. And when you add on top of that mindset training, mental health support, performance, wellness, reducing stress, dealing with emotions, improving how we look at things or perception of things. And then we add reading in our book club Tiny Habits And then the Stoicism book by Donald Roberson which combines stoicism with Donald Roberson who is a psychotherapist, CBT specialist as well. So he's kind of combining CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, the founders of that, do recognize stoicism and especially Epictetus as one of the main people that kind of drove that type of therapy. And it's interesting the link goes back to that ancient philosophical school.
Speaker 1:And that's why we're covering the philosophical side, who we've been the same two thousand years ago, we were exactly the same as we are today. And the modern day approach, CBT and how it works. So that's again, we read those two books. Imagine the transformation we're going to go through. And yeah, I think it's important that we kind of look at that type of transformation as opposed to just being like we lose fat.
Speaker 1:It's great to lose fat, okay, if you're overweight stuff it's going be good, it's going improve your health markers and stuff, but we can do more. Skillful frustrations, let's push it a bit. Okay, I know it's only week one guys, so don't be stressed and we gather ourselves this week and then we see what we do next week. But I just wanna share a few things about tiny habits to share with you now because it's book club day. If you haven't read up to page 30, that's fine.
Speaker 1:This book is amazing so far. And really a lot of moments. So I'm just gonna read a few things out of tiny habits for you to ponder today. Hopefully they'll make you, hopefully they'll improve your day. So he says, and there's a quote, But the alarming levels of obesity, sleeplessness and stress reported by the media and seen in my Stanford labs tell me there is a painful gap between what people want and what they actually do.
Speaker 1:Our approach to change is it's a design flaw not a personal flaw. In order to design successful habits and change your behaviors you should do three things. One, stop judging yourself. Two, take your aspirations and break them down into tiny behaviors. And three, embrace mistakes as discoveries and use them to move forward.
Speaker 1:The process doesn't require you to rely on willpower or set up accountability measures or promise yourself rewards. There is no magic number of days you have to do something. Those approaches aren't based on the way habits really work and as a result they aren't reliable methods for change and they often make us feel bad. Once you remove any hint of judgment your behavior becomes a science experiment. A sense of exploration and discovery is a prerequisite to success, not just an added bonus.
Speaker 1:That's important guys. We say about this become your own scientist is becoming our own scientist, the exploration and discovery and not judging our weight and judging them the data we collect, just using it as a scientist. That is a fundamental part of your success story here. It's not the bonus at the end and he says it here as well. And he says, before I go on let me set the record straight.
Speaker 1:Information alone does not reliably change behavior. This is a common mistake people make even well meaning professionals. The assumption is this, if we give people the right information it will change their attitudes which in turn will change their behaviors. I call this the information action fallacy. Many products and programs and well meaning professionals set out to educate people as a way to change them.
Speaker 1:At professional conferences they say stuff like, if people just knew the facts, they would change. I absolutely agree with this. And this is what I was saying before we started Octagon. There's a lot of coaches and PTs and things on the internet and Instagram, they got millions of followers, they get a lot of engagement and likes and comments. But fundamentally at Turtle what we do is the reason why we have so many touch points with you guys, Turtle Radio, the Zooms, the breakout rooms, the one to one email, the app to collect your data, the daily voice notes.
Speaker 1:All sorts of kind of make sure there's two way conversations because we know just talking accurate information just doesn't work. And this is what people are forgetting. And people say to me, some people say, know, Scott, like, know, being on social media and stuff, you know, maybe we need to do better at social media, maybe a turtle to get more engagement and likes and stuff. But that's never been my concern, it's never been where my time has really gone. My time has always gone inside the community making sure.
Speaker 1:That's why I do daily voice notes. The reason I did daily voice notes because I know the information itself isn't enough. So I thought if I could break things down daily so people don't get overwhelmed, they might be able to digest it better. Then when we do speak on Zooms, we can have a chat about it. As opposed to just like being spoken to.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's one to the side note, explain that's exactly what we think of Turtle and that's why we want this two way conversation to happen. And he goes on, in my research on habit formation dating back to 02/2009, I found that there are only three things we can do that will create lasting change. Have an epiphany, change our environment, or change our habits in tiny ways. Creating a true epiphany for ourselves or others is difficult and probably impossible. I'm not sure I agree with that.
Speaker 1:I've got many epiphanies that have changed my behavior. And, yeah, I don't know if we can rule that out. We have epiphanies reading this book, for example. Anyway, the essence of tiny habits is this. Take a behavior you want, make it tiny, find where it fits naturally in your life and nurture its growth.
Speaker 1:If you wanna create long term change it's best to start small. Here's why. With the tiny habits method you focus on small actions that you can do in less than thirty seconds. You will quickly wire in new habits and then they will grow naturally. Starting tiny means you can begin creating a big change without worrying about the time involved.
Speaker 1:With tiny habits, I advise people to start with three very small behaviors or even just one. The more stressed you are and the less time you have, the more appropriate this method is for you. No matter how much you want to cultivate a healthy habit, you won't be able to do it reliably if you start big. When you start big, the new habit probably won't stick. In many people's lives tiny isn't just the best option.
Speaker 1:It might be the only option. It's simple. This habit he tells everyone to do and it takes about three seconds and we're all gonna start doing this now and it's called the I habit. I hope I'm saying that right. The Maui habit.
Speaker 1:After you put your feet on the floor in the morning, immediately say this phrase, it's gonna be a great day. As you say these seven words, try to feel optimistic and positive, maybe crack a smile. The recipe is timing habits format looks like this. So think about that. Every time you wake up, step on the feet.
Speaker 1:Okay? It's going to be a great day today. I know it. I feel it's going be a great day. And that's it.
Speaker 1:That's the habit you start your day off guys. Hopefully you can do that. Maybe there's another habit we can do. Maybe at the end of every voice note it is I talk about the one big thing. I talk about doing the one big thing all the time.
Speaker 1:But maybe after a voice note the next thing we do as a habit, something tiny, is that we do something really small to maybe write down a line of win, what we're grateful for. Think of something you can write down small, maybe a win, grateful. You know, doing your one big thing will take maybe sometimes longer than seconds. Text a friend that you love them, text a family member you love them, you miss someone to see them or whatever, something that if you want to go down that route. Maybe write down the thing that resonated with you the most and send it to another member.
Speaker 1:Okay, you all this resonated with what do think of? Send that off. Journal maybe, as soon as the voice notes finishes you just carry forward onto the book and just journal for fifteen to twenty seconds. Let's try and what he does is these kind of habit stacking. What can we do at the end of a voice note that's gonna take few seconds, and not too difficult?
Speaker 1:So have a think about that. Let's come up with an idea. But I think we also start doing it. Starting right now today and tomorrow is the Maui habit. Once we get up every day, as soon as the feet touch the floor, it's gonna be a great day today, and I'm gonna feel good about it.
Speaker 1:And that's it, guys. Hopefully, I see you all in book club to discuss this book because it is such a good book so far. And, yeah, suggestions on habit stacking, the voice note with something small that we can all do, let me know, and we can start building something. But enjoy your day. Let's, let's zoom back in now to the next sixteen, twenty four hours we call after the day, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Make sure that you, you know, you get your one big thing done because if we go too much, too big of a list, we won't get anything done. Get your one big thing done, then your day is a success no matter what. But you get you know what happens when you do your one big thing and you get it done? You end up doing more things because it drives momentum. Progress equals moment momentum equals progress and progress equals motivation.
Speaker 1:Motivation goes back through, drives more momentum, which drives more progress. So that's the flywheel we wanna build. So get you one big thing done, I will speak to you all later and tomorrow.
