Words of "Wisdom"

Circuit Training for Fitness

Picture this:

You got out of work later than ususal... perfect timing to hit rush hour at its height and extend your normal 20-minute commute to the gym into an all-out 45-minute crawl full of frustration.

By the time you get to the gym, you only have about 25 minutes before you need to leave.

What do you do? Do you literally throw in your towel and just go home? How can you possibly salvage a decent training session out of the train wreck that was the afternoon?

Circuit Training is waiting to save the day! Well, so are Time Turners, but pretty much no one has one of those things...

What is Circuit Training?

The possibilities are limited only by your imagination (and your physical capacity. I know from personal experience that performing box jumps after a barbell sumo deadlift is a baaaaad idea).

Typically, circuits are comprised of 5-8 exercises and you want to work with weights about 75-80% of your max. Translation: pick weights that you could probably perform for 8-10 challenging repetitions. String them all together, and work through the circuit with minimal rest between exercises.

In terms of time, you can set up your circuit a couple of different ways:

1. Set a particular rep goal per exercise and then set your time for 15-25 minutes and see how many rounds of the circuit you can perform.

2. Pick a number of rounds to complete and try to finish as quickly as possible. Usually, if you have about 5-8 exercises, 5 rounds will be around 20-ish minutes.

Benefits of Circuits:

1. They're a great way to improve overall conditioning without watching  your hard earned muscle mass wither away. Two recent research reviews (abstracts here and here) have found that steady state cardiovascular training can a) decrease power output (yikes! Not good for athletes that need to produce power aka: everyone) and b) compromise muscle mass (and thus strength) gains. This effect is seen most prominently when aerobic training is 3x/week for greater than 20 minutes. The metabolic pathways that aerobic and anaerobic (think strength training and sprint/interval training) are conflicting. It's very hard to maintain a large amount of muscle mass and be a long-distance runner!

Circuit training is similar, metabolically, to sprint/interval/hill training in that it preserves lean muscle mass.

Steady state cardiovascular training, on the other hand, can lead to elevated levels of cortisol (stress hormone) which can decrease the effectiveness of muscle-building hormones such as testosterone and insulin-like growth. It also encourages muscle protein break down.

While strength training too breaks down muscle tissue, the anabolic  (building) environment produced by strength training encourages repair more than the catabolic (break down) environment of aerobic training.   Strength coach Charles Poliquin says:

Whereas endurance exercises compromise anaerobic performance and body composition, anaerobic training modes such as sprint intervals and weight lifting will benefit endurance athletes if programed properly. To improve endurance performance, do a strength-type resistance training program with loads of 80 percent of the 1RM or heavier. This will train the type IIA muscle fibers so they increase the rate of force development and get faster.

Type IIA muscle fibers = strong, powerful muscles. We want those!

So if you're still with me, we'll move on to the second point.

2. It's time-efficient. After a quick dynamic warm-up and maybe a warm-up set or two of the planned exercises, the total time of a circuit should be no more than 25-minutes start to finish. 15-minutes would even be sufficient depending on the intensity of the exercise selection and weights used. Nice huh? It's just long enough to make you feel like you've worked out but not too long that you're home late for dinner.

3. (but really 2.5) Not only are they time-efficient but they're efficient in the sense that a circuit can hit a lot of muscle groups, through full ranges of motion, in one fell swoop. While a jog will really only get your legs (and, I would argue, not very well since the range of motion is small, the force production is low, and the intensity isn't that high either) and maybe some low level core activation, a circuit can be full body. Take a look at this sample:

Goblet or barbell squat x 6-8

Pushup x 8-10

Step back lunge x 6-8/side

3 Point Row x 8/side

Kettle bell swing x 10

Can you see the total body genius in that? We have lower body (both bilateral and unilateral movements), upper body (push and pull) and a delightful amount of full range of motion exercises. All of which, if one wanted, could be done with just one kettlebell.

Run through that baby 5 or 6 times and try to tell me that's not cardio. Oh wait, you can't. I can't hear you over your screaming lungs and gasping breaths.

4. Because circuits demand so much from your muscles and cardiovascular system, they're pretty calorically expensive, which means your body will be burning calories longer post-workout than they would after a lower intensity training session (aka: low-intensity, steady state cardio). On those above-linked research reviews, it was found that athletes reduced body fat when they performed high intensity exercise (sprints or circuits).

So, if you're looking for an efficient way to reduce body fat, preserve lean tissue, AND improve your cardiovascular fitness, circuit training is definitely a tool you want in your toolbox!

I feel obligated to note that strength training, solid strength training sessions, need to make up the bulk of your training week. Picking up heavy things repeatedly is the best way to build muscle and get stronger. Circuit training, while it won't make you weaker and can aid with strength gains, is inferior overall to 80-90% max lifting in terms of producing maximal strength gains. While I don't recommend basing your entire training plan around circuits, they are beneficial and even fun (yes, fun.) to throw in every once and a while.

Lifting & Running = Monster Benefits - An Intern Post!!!

This week we're going with one theme: RunFAST. This is the new program we've been developing that we'll officially take the lid off of on Friday. I have to acknowledge, we're offering something totally new, so we're gonna take it slow and start with a post a bit more traditional in terms of the usual SAPTstrength banter. But check the blog every day this week. We've got 5 killer posts lined up.

For the first RunFAST post, one of our interns has written a fantastic post describing in detail the benefits of lifting for ALL TYPES OF RUNNERS (yes, you distance folks can enjoy this, too!).

Why should you listen to this guy who I just admitted is an intern, well, he's a special intern. His name is Gustavo Osorio (or Goose from here on out) and he just graduated from George Mason. Goose was a member of the track team and a stellar decathlete who very recently repeated as CAA champion! Pretty cool, right? This guy knows his stuff. I learned a few things myself and, given that I was his strength coach, that means he really knows some awesome details about high-performance.

I opened up comments again, so please post your thoughts and share with friends. Here we go:

Lifting And Its Benefits For Runners!

“Strength is the foundation for excellence,” this is a mindset I’ve come to respect and adopt for myself after my short time here at SAPT. When you think about it a strong body is a health body, one capable of efficiently moving in any way and letting a person’s athleticism truly shine. Strength is without a doubt the foundation for speed and agility. This concept that may seem foreign to many runners because of all the myths regarding resistance training and running. Many runners and even some running coaches are under the impression that hitting up the weight room once in a while will only result in injury, getting “bulky”, and losing that speed they’ve worked so hard to achieve. When, in reality, a well-structured resistance training program can make the body bulletproof, make your muscles more efficient without bulk, and boost the training effects of your running workouts (aka make you faster).

Myth #1: Lifting (squatting and deadlifting) is bad for your back. Don’t do it!

When performed correctly and with the appropriate assistance work squats and deadlifts can help you build a bulletproof back, glutes, and hamstrings. All three of these muscle groups also happen to be three of the most common sites for sprains and injuries on runners. Coincidence?? I think not! When running you’re lower back acts as a shock absorber, while the glutes and hamstrings are used for force production to propel the body forward. If an individual doesn’t strengthen these muscle groups and continues to constantly hammer them with more running eventually the muscles breakdown from overuse and an injury occurs.

On the other hand, if an individual strengthens these muscle groups they reduce their chances of injury and increase the work load their body can handle. This means they’ll be able to put in more work on the track during practice and, when meet day arrives, fast times will be run!

Fun fact about elite runners, whether it be a sprinter or a distance runner, is that they have some type of year around resistance training program implemented into their training. When you get to the Olympic level and everyone is tenths of seconds away from each other, keeping your body healthy through resistance training makes the difference between being an Olympic medalist and not making the final.

Myth #2: Lifting will make you bulky and slow

A big fear amongst runners is that resistance training will put on too much “useless” muscle for them to carry around. Truth is, a resistance training routine will make you bulky and slow ONLY if you completely stop running and if you have no idea of how to make it sport specific. Just because you’re lifting weights doesn’t mean you’ll turn into the hulk overnight (or ever... let's be real here) but it can make your muscles more efficient at what they do. By training your energy systems through lifting you’re running can be exponentially enhanced. Think of your body as a car and that the energy systems providethree different types of fuel it runs on. These BIG 3 are: the phosphagen system, the anaerobic system, and the aerobic system.

The phosphagen system provide the equivalent of jet fuel for the body. It gives you tons of energy but it burns out super fast! How fast you ask?? Well it gives you enough for 6 to 10 seconds of all out exertion. It provides the energy for the beginning of every race and it is the most dominant energy system during short running event, 60 meters to 100 meters. It is also involved in any sport that requires any sudden bursts of speed and explosion such as basketball, baseball, football, and volleyball. This system is primarily trained through plyometrics and lifts that require high force production at high speeds.

The anaerobic system gives you a mix between jet fuel and regular gas, it still yields a high amount of energy and manages to last a bit longer, between 1 to 3 minutes depending on the intensity of the event. This system is the most dominant for the 400-800 meter distances.It is also involved in sports that require prolonged bouts of speed and some endurance such as boxing, wrestling, lacrosse, and soccer. This is a tricky energy system to train because it requires a mix of power training, muscular strength training, and some muscular endurance training.

The aerobic system gives the body the same effect gas would in a car, it doesn’t let you go blistering fast but it give you a constant stream of energy to keep you going for miles. This is the dominant system in athletes who compete in endurance events such as triathlons, marathons, long distance swimming, and cross country skiing. This energy system can be trained through circuit training and low weight/high rep/low rest lifting.

**WORD OF CAUTION: Train a certain energy system through lifting does not mean you’ll necessarily get faster. When you integrate a lifting program on to a running program correctly the two can complement each other quite nicely. However if all you do is lift aerobically and then expect to go run a marathon you most likely won’t finish.**

Myth #3: Lifting has no positive transfer to running.

Another great benefit of resistance training is the improvement in something called your Rate of Force Development (RFD). [Side note: Kelsey did an amazing job of going into great detail on RFD, if you haven’t read her posts I strongly recommend them! Part 1 and Part 2.] Basically what that means is how fast your muscles can produce a high amount of force. This is beneficial to runners and all athletes because producing higher amounts of force at a faster rate enable you to move faster. Through training this can help optimize your stride length (amount of distance covered per step) and increase your stride frequency (how fast your feet hit the ground) both of which will also make you faster.

This last bit is something most people often neglect, but it makes a world of difference in their running. Aside from improving energy systems and Rate of Force Development lifting can be used to improve running posture. When performed correctly the squat and the deadlift teach people to brace their core and to properly align their back so it’s in the neutral position. A lot of people can go through an entire running career (like myself) without ever realizing that this has a massive positive transfer to running.

The two pictures above demonstrate how the body should be aligned during the deadlift and squat. If you take a side picture of yourself you should be able to draw a straight line from your hips to the base of the head.

Let’s take a look at Tyson Gay coming out of blocks. You can make a straight line from his hips to his head, JUST like a squat or deadlift! Coincidence?? I think not!  By keeping his back in a neutral position and bracing his core he is getting the most propulsion out of the power he is putting on the ground. By keeping his core rigid (not tense) all the force being placed on the ground is not lost or being absorbed by an arched or hunched back. Same thing would happen if you lifted with a rounded back, the spine would absorb a lot of the force going up (deadlift) or down (squat) instead of letting your legs and glutes do the work.

Now take a look on the right at Carl Lewis, he is in the Maximum Velocity phase of the 100 meters which means he is trying to maintain his top speed for as long as possible. The line from the hips to the head is still there which means he is getting the most out of the force production. But that’s not all! Notice how his hip are neutral and not anteriorly rotated, his butt isn’t sticking out. This allows him to get a higher knee drive, cover more ground with his stride, and keeps him from kicking his leg too far back. A great way to teach this to people is the finishing position in the squat and the deadlift often referred to as the “lock out”. And like the squat/deadlift lock out phase if his hips were too posteriorly rotated, too far forward, he would put his back out of alignment and sacrifice kick back range of motion.

How to Get More Done in Less Time: Parkinson's Law

(Note: In Part 1 we discussed how to save massive amounts of time each day by reducing the frequency at which you check/respond to email. In Part 2 we briefly discussed how to cut out distractions that keep you for working on the task at hand. Now on to the third and final installment of this series...)

Meetings. Putting together a presentation. Writing a paper or blog post. Shuffling papers around in the office. Studying for an exam. Entering data into an Excel spreadsheet.

Ever notice how, at times, you find yourself spending wayyyy longer on a task than you know you should be spending to complete? I know I do. Or did, at least, until I discovered the beauty of using Parkinson's Law to my advantage.

What is Parkison's Law? You can view it here on Wikipedia, but I think Tim Ferriss summed it up quite nicely for us:

Parkinson's Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline. If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials. If I give you a week to complete the same task, it's six days of making a mountain out of a molehill. If I give you two months, God forbid, it becomes a mental monster. The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

We can use Parkinson's Law to our advantage by setting extremely clear, and borderline impossibly short, deadlines for various tasks and 'To-Do' items. I've been instituting this over the past couple weeks and WOW, I can't quite express how much of a life changer this has been for me.

Personally, I've found E.gg Timerto be an invaluable source for helping me produce more output with less input (time) when doing anything at a computer. Heck, I'm using E.gg Timer right now as I type this. You can set the countdown timer for however long you wish - it will fill up your screen when it gets to zero - and it's amazing how the ticking clock will keep you inexorably focused on action steps instead of deliberation and procrastination. 

Again, quoting Ferris:

If you haven't identified the mission-critical tasks and set agressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Evern if you know what's critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace it, leaving you at the end of the day with nothing accomplished.

How else could dropping off a package at UPS, setting a few appointments, and checking e-mail consume an entire 9-5 day?

Many of us subconsciously realize this, but never actually set self-imposed deadlines to force us to get more done in less time.

While I'm not necessarily proud of this, I unknowingly used Parkinson's Law to allow me to get an A on almost every exam I took in high school and college; it didn't take me long to realize that I got the same grade whether I started studying a week out from the exam, or only 24 hours (and sometimes as little as 1-2 hours) before taking the exam.

Why? Whenever I began studying far in advance, I'd inevitably allow myself to become distracted by phone calls, the internet, outdoor games with friends, you name it, as I knew deep down that I still had plenty of time to study. But when I knew I had a major (and quite difficult) exam looming in only 5 hours or less, it FORCED me to shut out anything that would steer me away from doing well on the test.

In fact, I recently received this text from a friend of mine who had graduated from his doctorate of physical therapy program, and was preparing for the physical therapist licensure exam, "So you know how in Undergrad you were the greatest Crammer of all time. Any advice for someone who has an upcoming licensure exam and is feeling really lazy about studying?"

I had to laugh upon receiving that text, as I didn't know which was more unnerving: The fact that I was known in college for being a talented crammer (if we can even attempt to glamorize that "skill") , or that an up-and-coming practicing PT was looking for advice on studying for the licensure exam!

Now, I am certainly not advocating procrastination. And, to clear my conscious....should any individuals be reading this that are currently enrolled in an educational institution, my advice to you is to study in advance for your tests, dang it!

But it brings up a valuable point. Deadlines, whether self-imposed or not, allow us to ignore minutia and focus on the important. So I encourage all of you to begin setting deadlines on those "open ended" tasks that can take hours on end to complete, and adhere to those deadlines!

This is especially true for us perfectionists in the crowd that agonize over every single detail within a project we're working on. Set an unrealistic deadline, and stick to it. The earth will continue to spin, I promise.

3 Practical Steps: Get More Done in Less Time and Create Time to Enjoy Your Life (Part 2)

In Part 1, I discussed the first step in producing more output via less input, and how to increase your "free time" by drastically reducing the deceptively voluminous time spent on unnecessary email checking. For you those of you who missed it, you can check it out HERE.

What follows is the second step in creating more time in your day. I promise I'll spare you the waves of prolixity I may have drowned you with in Part 1.

2. Eliminate All Time Wasters In Your Day

We humans are experts at creating distractions in order to avoid completing the tasks that are actually of greatest importance. I can't tell you how many times I'm sitting in a coffee shop, or walking by an office window, and catch a glimpse of someone who's clearly supposed to be working but has Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, or a Blog pulled up on their computer screen.

And I won't try to fool you by preaching that I'm the most self-controlled guy of the bunch, nor that I'm immune to the time-wasting practice of fools. So what are a few things I recently instituted, and would be remiss not to recommend them to you as well?

1. Block all the websites you're addicted to out of pure entertainment. 

For those of you who have worked on your laptop while traveling via airplane, even notice how much more you were able to accomplish in the short time you sat there? As is kinda obvious, it's because you didn't have any access to internet (I'm pretty sure some airlines may have internet access on planes now, but I digress...)

When we're connected to the internet, we almost can't help ourselves but go to our favorite "fire gazing" web domains. These websites do nothing but allow you to delay doing what will actually provide you the greatest return for investment.

The problem is, sometimes you need the internet to accomplish the task at hand (using an online program or app, for example), so it's not always a matter of simply turning off the internet to get something done. Besides, even if it is, you can always click the "On" switch should you lose self-control and desire to browse the web rather than complete your work.

So how to remedy this issue of our own depravity?

If you use Google Chrome, install Google Nanny, and if you use Firefox, then install Leech Blocker. I personally use Google Nanny, and I love it.

The beauty of these is you set a pre-determined time in which it will prevent you from logging on to particular websites. You can choose what days you're blocked, and what times within those days you are blocked. I have personally chosen to block, from 8AM-10PM on weekdays, Facebook and all the popular fitness and "lifestyle design" blogs I tend to lurk on to distract myself. I can check up on them during the weekend, to see anything I may have missed. I do schedule a 15-minute window for Facebook to open up so that I can post these blogs online, but outside of that it's an extremely refreshing media fast.

And don't worry, contrary to popular belief, the world isn't going to end if you left of the loop for a few days in the blog-o-sphere.

I chose 8AM-10PM because those are the hours I'm typically near my computer, and I can't tell you how many weekday evenings I've gotten to bed wayyyy later than planned due to some pointless internet roaming. 10PM keep me from logging on the web when I should be climbing into bed.

 I can't tell you how much time this has saved me, and how much faster it has allowed me to accomplish tasks. As when Jacopo reminds the Count in The Count of Monte Cristo, "I must protect you, even if it means protecting you from yourself."

2. Stop checking your email so darn much.

Yes, I had to repeat this, even if I already belabored the point in part 1. It's funny, as I feel that all of us across the board tend to enjoy checking email much more than we enjoy sending email. If you don't batch your email and make your checking/sending an efficient and time-saving process (as discussed in part 1), this leads to the creation of an enormous gorilla on your back, constructed from all the emails you haven't replied to.

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Next week, in the last installment of this series, I'll cover a critical action step to that drastically cuts down on the amount of time it takes to finish an important task. Up until now, we've learned how to remove distractions, but next week we'll go over a bit of the actual "process" in task completion.

3 Practical Steps: Get More Done in Less Time and Create Time to Enjoy Your Life

"What's it going to be?" I mused blithely to myself as I rummaged through the gift bag. "A 21st century shaving kit? A manly hunting knife? Perhaps some Under Armour Boxers*?"

I was seated at the rehearsal dinner for the wedding of my eldest brother, Brian. The dinner and celebratory toasts had recently subsided, and Brian had just made his rounds passing out the gifts to his groomsmen, me being included in the bunch. As I extricated  The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss from my gift bag, I had no clue of the impact it was about to make on my daily living.

Upon holding the book in my hands, perusing through the table of contents and the back cover, I was honestly a bit dubious of the book's promises and claims. I had heard of Tim Ferriss and his book (as probably most of you reading have, too), as Ferriss had quickly launched into semi-celebrity status in the sphere of lifestyle design and blogging upon the release of The 4-Hour Workweek. However, I'm not typically a fan of "Self-Help" materials, which is what I thought this particular book embodied. I find that 95% of the people who read self-help books may, yes, genuinely enjoy what they’re taking in during the read, but they then typically walk away and do nothing about it; they fail to implement any of the nifty solutions to their problems. And as we know: Education without action is just entertainment. Nothing more than that, really.

But at the same time, I knew that Brian had read (and applied) the concepts in The 4-Hour Workweekhimself in order to successfully create his own business, shortly after he made the decision to leave a steady and "safe" position he held at a company ranked top 100 on the Fortune 500. Not to mention, he was now living and working according to when he operated most productively (as opposed to the non-negotiable 9-5 workday most corporations enforce), and enjoying the convenience of working from home.

So I decided to give the book a shot. I was looking for a new book to read, anyway…

350 pages and a few action steps later, I realized that the 4HWWwas far from your ordinary feel-good, lets-sit-holding-hands-in-a-circle-singing-kumbaya self-help book. No, this was a book chalked full of practical, real-world strategies that anyone – be they an employee of a large corporation, an entrepreneur, a business owner, or manager – could immediately follow and see instant results.

Taking myself for example, I’ve already found myself experiencing an extra two hours of free time per day, more enjoyable weekends, and increasingly productive work periods in which I produce more output in less time. And I'm just getting started. 

And so I wanted to share some of the information here, to help those of you reading who may be in need of a bit of lifestyle redesign.

-Are you perpetually buried by the incessant and stubborn flow of emails? -Do you check your Facebook 15 times per day  (I'm being generous here by lowballing this number...), and wonder why you can seemingly never complete anything? -Does your To-Do List add items to itself faster than you can check them off? -Do you feel like you never get to do the things you actually ENJOY doing?

Now, before I continue, let me be clear that I have absolutely no intention of working only four hours per week; I simply love my job too much and personally prefer to be actively and intimately involved in what I do on a daily basis: Teaching athletes and regular people how to move and feel better. (If you hate your job, maybe it's best to reevaluate what you're doing as a career before we even think about moving further with this topic.)

Nor do I pretend that the majority of you could achieve a realistic 4-hour workweek, even if you followed all of the steps in the 4HWW to a tee.

But what I do think that all of you reading can (hopefully) agree with is this: We should work so that we can live, NOT live so that we can work.

And my wish is that these steps can at least help you get started walking down the right path.

1a. Check and Respond to Email Only Twice Per Day

Email (and I'll throw Facebook and Twitter into the mix, too) is perhaps the greatest time waster in modern society. With large thanks to the invention and widespread use of the smartphone, email has become a flighty temptress that people can't resist checking into at every possible moment: first thing in the morning, every 5 minutes during the work day, standing in line for coffee, walking down the city street, in between sets of squats at the gym, right before bed and even during dinner with family. Heck, when I was working as a personal trainer, I had a client who insisted that he carry his phone with him during every session, checking the incoming email as soon as his phone buzzed.

With instant access to each other and instant access to information, we have created this false sense of urgency that the world is going to end unless we check our email and/or social media accounts every few seconds.

Why does this really matter, and how does it pertain to the title of this article? Accomplishing critical tasks in less time (and thus freeing up extra time in your day) requires complete focus on the project at hand, with as few interruptions as possible. Quoting Ferriss:

There is a psychological switching of gears that can require up to 45 minutes to resume a major task that has been interrupted. More than a quarter of each 9-5 period (28%, or 134.4 minutes) is consumed by such interruptions, and 40% of people interrupted go on to a new task without finishing the one that was interrupted. This is how we end up with 20 windows open on our computers and nothing completed at 5pm.

In fact, a psychiatrist at King's College in London performed an IQ study in which he determined that people stoned (under the influence of marijuana) actually performed HIGHER on IQ tests than those who were "under the influence" of distracting email! You can read the story HERE.

I love what Ferriss points out later in the book:

Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.

Here are a few steps I've employed to reduce my frequency of email interruption down to just two times per day. Guys, I really can't emphasize enough how this has RADICALLY altered how much more I accomplish in a day, and even (which may sound counterintuitive) how much more punctual it has made me with responding to emails.

A. Turn off the audible alert that lets you know when a new email has come in. B. Turn off the automatic Send/Receive feature that delivers new email as soon as it's sent to you. 

I don't know anyone who can honestly say they can resist the urge to pull up the email screen as soon as they hear that oh-so-familiar "Ding!" that rings every time new email comes in. It creates an unnecessary distraction, and it's the virtual equivalent of crack.

Or, for those of you Mac users (I have one), you know how hard it is to resist perpetually checking the notification on your dock informing you of how many unread emails you have.

C. Only check email TWICE per day. This, for me personally, has been the greatest difference maker. 

Ferriss recommends 12noon and 4PM, as he says that these are the times that provide the greatest likelihood of ensuring you've received a response from a previous email sent. I personally use 11AM and 2:30PM because of my schedule, but it's really up to you.

In fact, while I follow this policy for my business email, I now only check my personal email once per day, at 11AM.

Paranoid that you're going to receive something so critically important that it can't wait until your allotted email checking? Use an autoresponder to let people know of your new policy, such as the example Ferriss provides:

Greetings All,

Due to high workload and pending deadlines, I am currently responding to email twice daily at 12pm ET [be sure to indicate your time zone] and 4pm ET .

If you require help with something that can’t wait until either 12pm or 4pm, please call me on my cell phone at 555-555-5555.

Thank you for understanding this move to greater effectiveness.

All the best, Tim Ferriss

The beauty of that is you are providing your phone number for those that genuinely need to immediately reach you for an issue that's actually important or time-sensitive. You can see another example of a more "boss friendly" autoresponder HERE.

You know what a surprising side effect of this new policy has been for me, personally? I'm now actually MORE productive and punctual with responding to people via email!

Since I know that (if I'm doing my 2:30pm email check) I won't be on my email for the rest of the day, I can't use the "Oh I'll respond to them in 30 minutes" excuse, which as you know, can quickly lead to a stacking of 'Marked as Unread' items in your inbox, stressing you out to no end.

1b. Don't Check E-Mail, Texts, or Facebook First Thing In The Morning

This habit alone has changed my life. Checking email used to be one of the very first things I did every single day, even on the weekends. I'd wander out into my living room, pet my cat good morning, and then flip open my computer and check my email. I don't know what it is, but I think that most of us are now programmed to check email whenever possible, and not even out of necessity, but out of mere habit.

And I don't have a smartphone, but I can only imagine those that do probably check their email and/or social media while lying in bed. C'mon', admit it, I know you do!

After refusing to do it for a couple weeks now, I've experienced firsthand why checking email first thing, while a seemingly innocuous habit, is actually quite detrimental:

1. It will automatically cause you to get caught up and distracted by whatever you have seen arrive in your inbox. Say goodbye to a distraction-free morning, and hello to immediate saturation of seemingly uber-important, really-can't-wait-another-minute matters.

2. You will now have your thoughts occupied by the emails that arrived, dramatically hindering the real, important tasks you had to accomplish or work on that morning.

3. It can subconsciously sets the tone for the day of checking email nonstop. As we've seen  above, we want to avoid this at all costs.

4. It can take up a deceptive amount of time (especially if you throw Facebook and Twitter into the mix), erasing hours from your day before you even knew what hit you. This can be especially dangerous during the weekends, pulling you away all morning from things that, oh I don't know, involve you doing something fun with the people you care about the most?

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Some of you may be sitting there thinking "This would be impossible and impractical for me to do." And you know what, I thought the same thing. But I dare you to try it. You can thank me later, don't worry.

I realize I've only covered Step 1 out of the 3 practical steps I promised you in the title of this post, but I'll be back on Friday with Part 2. (**Update: You can view Part 2 HERE**)

  *The inventor of those can have my firstborn son.

Attitude vs. Environment

  Great teams create an environment and culture that allow players to unlock their potential.  Outside of sport, where we grow up, who we socialize with, and what our family structure is often shapes our personality.  There’s no doubt that a strong and positive environment can be a major factor in determining success, however environment isn’t everything.

 

As a coach, or organization, it is your job to try to create the best possible environment for your players.  The signs in the locker room, the practice facilities, and the marketing of the team, can all have a great impact on the performance of an athlete.  Don’t take for granted the ability to shape environment and give athletes the best opportunity for success.

 

As a player you often have little control over your environment.  You don’t pick your team, your teammates, the coaches, where you play, etc.  In fact, we may be forced into certain environments that we have little control over.  It’s often in those situations where excuses manifest and frustration takes over.  Examples like, “my team doesn’t care about winning”, or this team “isn’t any good”, or “nobody takes this seriously”, are real examples of environment dictating attitude.

 

As a player figure out how you can have the best possible attitude even in the worst possible environment.    Let your attitude be a driving force in changing the environment for the better.  Often when our environment is poor, we fall into the trap of allowing ourselves to blend into that poor environment.

 

If your environment is a 2 out of 10 and your attitude is a 4 out of 10 then you may be contributing to the poor environment.  However, if you take that 2 environment and improve your attitude to a 7 then maybe you can improve your environment.  It’s a simple change that can often be the difference between winning and losing.  Make the change and improve your attitude and environment today.

 

As the great Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.”