Unanchor Fitness

One thing I've been thinking about a little more recently is the tiny reminders you can set for yourself to keep the brain active and stimulated.

A great example of something I regularly incorporate now, is brushing your teeth every morning with the non-dominant hand while standing on one leg.

This sounds really dumb, but doing so in the morning can wake your brain up, make oral hygiene slightly more interesting and costs absolutely nothing.

Something else I do on purpose is trying to do the maths first before taking a calculator out, or figuring out the way before opening the map on my phone.

Keeping the brain working, even if it’s for just a few seconds.

What do you do the harder way on purpose to keep the brain strong?

Enough water looks like 35ml per kg of bodyweight.

For your average 75kg person that's 2.6 litres.

Walking around dehydrated is not a good default mode, it drags down your energy, focus, and performance.

Get yourself a waterbottle, keep it filled up and make it easy on yourself.

Eventually you will have to find balance, if you want to stick to this plan forever.

One client as an example, works super hard, trains hard and eats really well, but has no space for anything 'selfish'. The main action from one of our calls was - go and treat yourself to a spa day.

She pencilled it in, didn't get around to it until we spoke next and then said "I will save it until I reach my target weight on the scale, as a reward"

Celebrating is great, pushing yourself for more is great.

But if your whole life is built around restricting until you can reward yourself, like a child cleaning up his room only because they can then have an ice cream, it's not going to work.

Eventually training consistently, eating well and getting enough sleep has to become the default rather than the chore.

Not because of what you'll get afterwards in return, because of what it gives you in the moment.

Clean the room because you like having a clean room, and because you manage to find some joy in the process of cleaning.

(That’s me having a lovely time throwing a kettlebell around on the beach as an example)

Plateaus happen to the best of us.

It will feel like you've been making steady progress for a while and then all of a sudden, you can't add a single rep, and it's been a few weeks of not budging

Sometimes, breaking through a plateau requires getting creative.

Here's some options that can work to coax your body into responding and progressing:

Push - keep pushing through it at the same rep range, grind it out, but be patient.

Pull - pull back for a deload week, less weight, more focus on form and intention. Then ramp your way back up to the plateau and beyong

Overload - do the opposite, overload on purpose. Drop the reps down and pick up a heavier weight - it's going to make the 8-12 reps you were doing feel very light when you come back to it.

Alternate - find a different exercise to swap in, nothing wrong with changing things up and keeping it fresh, just not too often

Caffeine is great - but you need to know how to use it.

As a rule of thumb, at least 30 minutes after waking, at least 8 hours before going to bed at night.

Caffeine blocks the actions of adenosine in the body - your 'sleepiness molecule'

If you consume caffeine too close to bedtime it will reduce your sleep quality and can make falling asleep harder.

That's obvious.

What's not so obvious is that consuming caffeine immediately after waking stops your 'sleepiness molecule' to be cleared normally. They stay in their receptors, unable to leave since caffeine blocked the exit, and you end up still being sleepy after the caffeine wears off.

Give it 30-60 minutes and you'll feel much better for it.

Have a glass of water instead.

Motivation gets you started, but shouldn't be what keeps you going.

As soon as possible you should try to make regular exercise, as well as healthy eating, a HABIT.

A part of your life like brushing your teeth and walking the dog. Consistently showing up to do it, even if it's not always the best effort, because you know you have to, for yourself.

Strength and muscle builds very slowly, sometimes excruciatingly slow, and because of that, one perfect workout once in a blue moon will be completely overshadowed by a mediocre workout every week. Sometimes just getting the muscles moving and working, will be enough to send a signal to your body which says 'hey, build more muscle, we need it for stuff'.

The alternative to this is that your body WILL start paring down muscle.

From an evolutionary stand-point, muscle is a huge waste of hard-earned calories if it's not being used.

Nowadays, finding enough calories to survive is not an issue, but as a remnant of our shared history, you will need to repeatedly give the body a reason to build muscle, or at minimum, hold onto what you have.

So, if your motivation to train is non-existent, still showing up and going through the motions is a great idea. You'll probably find that once you get moving, and get into the groove, you end up having a good workout.

Even if you don't , showing up and having a sloppy workout still builds that habit and is a better option than not showing up at all, especially in the long run.

Are you running from what you don't want to be?

Or working towards what you want to become?

It seems a small difference, but how you think about the changes you're making has many layers that ripple everywhere else as well

“The strongest performance enhancer is still 8 hours of sleep.”

Here's a priority list of the key steps I get clients to take to improve sleep:

- Try to stick to a rough 'bedtime' regardless of the day of the week

- Phone into a different room entirely and on DND

- Limit blue light exposure after dark

- Wind down with a book - fiction if non-fiction gets you thinking too much

- Build some kind of nightly ritual - stretches, warm shower, fresh air...

Regular exercise and eating well will also have an impact on sleep.

All three end up promoting each-other and pushing you towards better health.

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