We spend one third of our lives sleeping. If you have ever thought that your sleeping periods are actually a huge waste of time, you should better think again. When a person is awake, the body cells are continuously active and as time during the day progresses they become more or less fatigued. Instances of sore feet, headaches, difficulties in breathing normally, among many other body malfunctions, can be directly related with poor sleeping habits and can tremendously reduce the productivity levels while being awake. Sleeping regularly during a specific time frame can help bodies rejuvenate and increase the conscious moments regardless of one's age or working habits.
As experts support, sleep provides body cells the necessary time to repair and recover from the daily demands. In need of a recovery period, our bodies experience a periodic loss of consciousness known as sleep. Entering this unconscious state is mandatory for a person's well-being, since sleep is an extremely important bodily function, needed as much as water, for the human body to function properly and be on alert. Essential to good health, the proper night sleeping habits are according to medical science the basic phase when our minds, organs and mussels find time to heal and relax.
But the proper sleeping time frame is not the same for everyone. Although many will state that sleeping straight for eight hours a day is exactly what the body and the mind needs to refresh, a variety of studies over the years suggest that the amount of time needed to sleep varies greatly from individual to individual. Factors such as the person's age, the current state of health, or even a country's climate, can influence the total amount of time needed by someone to wake up and feel alert, relaxed and fit. If fatigue and discomfort is experienced on a regular basis while awake, then probably more sleeping time is required. In particular, people undergoing a stressed period need to sleep longer. This realization is rather ironic if one considers that these individuals have reported to experience the most severe abnormalities in relation to their sleeping patterns. Thus, it is important for one to test the amount of sleep they receive against their productivity levels during the day and add or subtract sleeping time depending on their current situation.
Before taking a sleeping pill, attempt to form regular sleeping habits. Be proactive and try to relax so as to find the best possible combination between being asleep and being awake. Your body, your mind, your beloved ones and of course your boss will appreciate the difference. Don't waste time. Sleep!
Dont Waste My Life
I understand, everything else just seems to get in your way. Your work, your home life, your social life. The thing that often gets missed is your physical fitness training and training specifically for your sport.
Why is it that the one thing that can make such a difference to your OVERALL well being gets cut out... It seems that it is always the after thought.
Time is a very precious commodity, once it has gone it cannot be reclaimed, got back or reversed! As a busy professional, you are by definition "busy".
You are busy with work commitments, busy doing "busy stuff" that takes up huge proportions of your time, you have a busy social life associated to your work life, networking is key to your career progression and professional standing.
This problem affects corporate athletes of all levels. If you are an aspiring Olympic athlete, but NEED a career as well working to supplement your sport. Or, you are a weekend golfer, rugby or soccer player who happens to be a Director, VP or CEO of a multinational company, the restrictions on your time are the same.
If only you had more time to train, your game could be that little bit better, taking you to club, regional or national championship level! The ultimate cost of this show-stopper is lost opportunities to fully enjoy your sport. It will leave you with too many "if-only" and "what-if" questions later in life.
Also the opportunity for social and professional networking is lost too. This means missed business or promotion opportunities, because you don't play golf, or the rest of the management team play for the local soccer or rugby team and you don't.
However, your perception of how much time a training program actually takes may be slightly off the mark... and it really does not need to eat into your work commitments, social commitments, or your home life.
Gone are the days of ineffective, slow, bring cardio workouts requiring you to spend hours on the treadmill, or pounding the pavement early each morning, or late every night. Studies have shown that this is largely pointless for the majority of sports, and in many cases detrimental to your overall physical health.
Such training can very quickly cause repetitive strain injuries, structural health problems, specifically ankle, knee and hip joint problems as well as being an influencing factor in back pain.
What's more, this style of training has been shown to be as much as 9 times LESS effective for fat burning than other methods that take a fraction of the time!
Workouts can be much more focussed, getting you further towards your health and fitness goals can be done in a fraction of the time, leaving "Time" to be a POOR excuse rather than a legitimate reason for not training.
So what kind of training am I talking about, what can you do in a short time that will be effective for your sporting as well as health related goals?
OK, lets put it this way, if you are on the gym floor for more than 45 minutes, you are probably wasting an awful lot of time chatting, or doing exercises that really don't achieve an awful lot.
Exercise routines that focus on more "bang for your buck" movements and intensities.
For example, stay away from the machines, they "isolate" individual muscles and can cause muscular imbalances and have little reflection on how you use your body during your game.
Don't waste your time on doing a million reps of abdominal crunches, bicep curls, tricep extensions or calf raises. They do very little for you in the overall scheme of your training, and are a massive waste of time where the muscles can be utilised during other exercises anyway.
The exercises to focus on working the large muscle groups, use movement patterns that reflect your sport and work to massively boost your metabolism. We are talking Squats, Lunges, Deadlifts, rows, and push ups...
Learning to do each of these fundamental exercises will massively reduce your time in the gym, give you a really effective workout for fat burning and improving your sporting ability.
A keen water skier who is also works as a legal consult in a very busy bank here in Luxembourg, discovered that getting her workouts done in under 40 minutes meant that she never entertained the fact of missing a workout, the time issue never became an issue. Even after a few short months with this renewed focus on exercises that really made the difference, she had lost weight, dropped a clothing size and saw massive gains in her skiing performance too.
So you can see that there really is no need to waste time doing all your long slow cardio workouts. The biggest question for you now, is with time no longer a valid excuse, you really cannot miss your workouts anymore!
Go to the Gym tomorrow and try out the basic moves, if you don't know how to do them, there are plenty of explanations all over the internet, or you can contact an experienced personal trainer to help you.
Take action today and don't waste another minute of your time!
Both Jonathon Hardcastle & Tim Goodwin are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.