How You Get Into Great Shape, Stay in Shape, And Live An Effective Lifestyle
A Gym-kit for life
I’m not the best-looking guy. Not the greatest sports performer.
But I know a thing or two about life, what I’m about to share with you will make you stronger, and mentally fitter, help your kids, you’ll create confidence and self-esteem, improve your shape, and stay in great shape as you go.
It’s how you start your day.
Introverts, extroverts, ambiverts, night owls, bears, dolphins,…
The thing is, we are highly adaptable to the stressors that kick us out of balance, and yes you’ll do better when you’re subjected to certain stressors.
The quality of your life (including your life environment) largely depends on your state. When you want to live life in an effective manner, you’ll need to be up for it. Therefore, being in good condition, mentally sharp, and maintaining such a strong form will make life easier for you.
Focus on your inner state and attract what’s required to thrive.
Now, balance is a double-edged sword, especially when looked at through the lens of human development. It’s not the balance per se, but rather how well, and how fast you regain balance back.
How adaptable you are matters a ton.
Your heart’s variability reflects how adaptable your body can be. If your heart rate is highly variable, it usually points out your adaptability level. HRV is an important factor to thrive in life. Those with a higher heart rate variability tend to be less stressed and happier.
Great Shape
By great shape, I don’t mean you have to look like an athlete per se.
What do I mean by great shape?
What’s a great shape for you?
The shape that when you look in the mirror, you have a good feeling about yourself. The shape you’re in that, without the visual aspect makes you feel great while navigating through everyday life.
It’s how you present towards someone else, until that energy reflects, and feeds your partner into thinking you’re in great shape no matter your opinion. Indirectly, such a response or acknowledgment from your loved one magnetizes your mood and self-confidence.
All of these tiny aspects contribute to you feeling in great shape.
Here’s one approach:
Most people have a consistency problem. To acquire consistency, you have to invite it, so consistency presents itself as a no-brainer. For instance,
“Make training unavoidable.”
You don’t need to hunt for consistency, you need to be attracted to do what you desire. And even then, it is so difficult to always nail down daily.
It requires you to make a conscious setup that attracts you to behave subconsciously accordingly.
Here’s how I take care of this:
- I always carry a personal workout kit.
- Mental arsenal, know sufficient bodyweight movements.
- Have at least some free weights (a bare minimum) at home.
- Make it your first and most important task of the day, if that really isn’t possible then you want to make sure that you perform a training session around midday, not later than 13:00.
My personal workout kit
I always travel with body elastics, jumping rope (Ordinary and cordless), and some pushup handles by “Kraken” (medium height).
I have traveled with this kit glued to my back for the last 20 years.
Even when I got stuck on the vessel while sailing across the world during the “corona,” it never stood a chance to interrupt my training — I saw many people suffering around that time because they couldn’t attend the gym and were left with no baggage, you don’t want this to trust me.
Since then, I noticed that many “gym accessories” are harder to order online. More people became aware.
Nevertheless, I’m fortunate to be working on a vessel where we have a gym, that helps — You want to make sure your job too provides you with options that don’t interfere with you losing precious time. For instance, make sure you have a gym along your road to work and always have a bag with gym-wear standby in your car.
To avoid that we would lower our guards, and make sure to have your gym kit on standby. I always have one in my room in case my mind plays tricks on me and trying to convince me not-to-go to the gym. By having a kit nearby, you make it seemingly unavoidable to not go and work out. This is how you become more resilient.
Same as always having pen and paper ready.
The same as always having a book or an e-reader nearby.
Or, the same as always having a portion of quality (full spectrum of amino’s) protein with some whole carbs ready, you want to have as many as possible tools nearby that could easily trigger you into starting to exercise.
Know sufficient bodyweight movements
If you don’t know any, learn some movements through YouTube videos or bodyweight exercise apps. You can perform bodyweight exercises everywhere, and they can build serious strength.
A great advantage is that they are mostly compound movements and they work your whole body and mind in a more complex way. Bodyweight exercises often recruit more muscle fibers which can add value to your average weightlifting program.
Have a home gym
Whether it was while still living with my parents or whether I was living together with my wife in our first house, When we moved in with her parents during shifting houses, in our second house, and in the house we are living in now… I always had a home gym.
I hear you thinking, the answer is no! We are not uber-rich!
You don’t have to be rich to acquire a similar setup too.
Our present house (which we rent) is quite large and this provides me with a garage for my gym equipment, so that’s great. But back in the day, we lived in smaller places, and also there, I had at least one room reserved with some basic dumbells and lifting bars — Not so long ago I was even training in a four-by-four-meter garden house for about five years while freezing during the winter.
If there is one thing I can tell from experience it’s this: Winter times make you stronger! In whatever context you might put this.
If you can learn to enjoy moments like these you’ll become happier, improve your shape, become mentally stronger, make it easier to tackle the rest of your day, and win time by not needing to leave the house — Maintain such a habit and become more effective every day.
Stay In Shape
Many people struggle with diets, workouts, learning, and writing, some even experience trouble not keeping up with life but keeping up their own with hobbies.
The majority don’t take breaks seriously, and don’t have much patience, they don’t see the bigger picture. Staying in shape has much to do with knowing you’re not going to be in shape by the end of the month, but when you just perform some incremental steps in the correct direction daily, you might start to get in shape by the end of the year.
To maintain a preferred shape, you need to prioritize recovery. Emphasize full sleep cycles and brain breaks like naps, and meditation. It’s the only way to stay consistent in whatever you do, whether it covers the physical aspect of life or the mental side.
Here’s one for parents:
Everyone is an excuse artist. Especially parents.
You need to become uncomfortable with using excuses. When we become parents, it’s easy to use kids as an excuse to avoid taking the difficult road.
A few things we do with our kids that help us to stay active and in shape.
- Structure your entire days around the sleep of your youngest kids, when they sleep, you take brain breaks or sleep as well.
- Often we go for a walk outside (you don’t need to go running per se, walking offers huge benefits too).
- At home, have simple items like a trampoline, and jumping rope… I perform air squats or other simple body movement exercises with our four kids.
- Find the interest in sports for your kids, attend together, alone the movement of bringing your kids back and forth is a great way to increase your vitality.
Look, Staying in shape has more to do with your N.E.A.T.
N.E.A.T. covers the largest part of your day. Non-Exercise-Activity-Thermogenesis, what you burn after exercise during your day. In short, this is much less than during most exercises per hour, agreed. Yet, it’s the duration of your day that adds up and largely contributes to how many calories your body burns
But not only that.
In the blend, higher N.E.A.T. improves blood flow and blood pressure healthily, it also increases your chances of reaching flow states. A slight blood flow increase is important to transport all nutrients through your body.
Walking makes you contract your calves which increases cerebrospinal fluid in your brain. The more you reach flow, the more effective you’ll thrive throughout your day. Higher N.E.A.T. can even be beneficial for your writing and deep thinking.
“Treat your physical work and cleaning your house as your training.”
My whole life I’ve enjoyed the benefits of lifting weights to perform well at my job working on the deck of large ships. It’s not that you need to become the strongest person to impress your environment but rather reap the benefits of practicing correct movements, and doing that with great mobility for a long time. Prevent unwanted injuries like this, and stay in shape throughout your life.
The Effect Of Consistent Training For An Effective Lifestyle: “Zoomed In On One Component”
A home gym or just creative ideas to train with elastic bands or body weight are just some of the small components of living an effective life. They eliminate a lot of senseless transportation time. Operating like this induces quality time for your family as an aftermath.
You could say that’s Bullocks. True.
Although, we are all very influenced by all sorts of media. All over the net you spot gym gurus, models, and fitness influencers who make you believe that this is life… Surely you know better, don’t you?
See, working out is just a tiny part of most people’s day unless you’re an athlete or when working out is your profession, which for most it isn’t, and for many others will not last forever.
The compounded time by not pendeling back and forth between a gym and your house is not to be underestimated.
An example,
Let’s say you live near a gym and it takes you 15 minutes to get there.
That’s 30 minutes of travel time per gym session.
I know the legendary bodybuilder Mike Mentzer taught a strategy of lifting weights for only about 45 mins for three to four times per week to pack on dense muscle. But when you want to enjoy the positive mental effects throughout your life, you’ll benefit more from training perhaps less heavy, but daily. Whatever kind of exercise you like to do. As long as you take your rest seriously it will work miracles.
I took the example of Mike Mentzer, not because I’m the biggest fan of his style, but because Mike Mentzer was a proponent of High-Intensity Interval Training. You might want to implement HIIT when you want to stay in shape healthy and resilient because it works on the HRV as mentioned at the beginning of this post.
Let’s recap, that’s 30 minutes every day of the week. That’s 3h30min of senseless pendeling per week.
Perhaps you might think, why does this matter?
Look, I don’t know about you but I rather spend that 3h30m in another way. Which way, that depends on your needs, perhaps I can use it to write or read for 30 minutes longer…(Indeed, you caught me, this is exactly what I abuse that extra time for).
Without digging deeper into this matter, what’s important to get is that your training should be structured in a way that captures much more of your day unless you use it as an escape excuse, which plenty of people do.
You might want to work toward finding a solution to your residue time. Only then you enable yourself to arrange your life even more effectively.
Take This
I’m sharing this with you with full confidence because it’s how I lived most of my life, and I know the positive effects all of this delivers.
I don’t like to talk much about myself, I don’t like to share everything from my personal life. But I do see myself as an observer and personal-long-term-minded-guinea pig, and therefore I often implement things I stand for, that might help you out.
I’m not the best-looking guy, not the greatest sports performer, but I know a thing or two about life, and what I’ve just shared with you will make you stronger, and mentally fitter, help your kids, you’ll create confidence and self-esteem, improve your shape and stay in great shape as you go.
These are all ingredients to become more successful in many ways of life.
Living an effective lifestyle is about spending your time here most optimally and enjoyably, as much as possible with the people you love, without wasting much senseless time.
- Focus on N.E.A.T.
- Personal workout kit
- Find the interest in sports for your kids
- Know sufficient bodyweight movements
- Have at least some free weights (a bare minimum) at home
- Make exercise your first and most important task of the day
- Provide your kids with inviting opportunities where you can both benefit from
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Absorb, Read, Write, Sleep, Exercise, Thrive!
Thanks for reading this post!
I hope this provided you with something interesting I’ll be writing more about how to live your life more effectively.
P.S.:
I’m a firm believer in building a prosilient mind. I like to inspire and energize my readers by writing.
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