#278: TPM Coach's Care: 3 Simple Things You Can Do For Better Health.
Coaches, parents, officials, volunteers: it takes some action to improve your health through self-care. Start here.
This special edition revolves being grateful.
It is Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend and our focus is gratitude for our health. Coach’s/Parents/Officials this is for you.
Let’s face it, our lifestyle has us not moving very much. In fact, if we don’t want to move in a day, it can be done. Driving, sitting at work, driving, sitting at home. Go to bed. Repeat. When you throw in coaching time, preparation and administration, there is little left for our own self care.
There is many a day when our self-care is bottom of the list.
As we get older, that takes it’s toll.
In fact, not prioritizing our care for self, which manifests itself as inactivity in most of us, is now proven to be more damaging to our physical capacity that aging.
Think about that for a second.
We know that getting older reduces our ability to do stuff.
Being inactive can do more damage than the decline that comes from aging.
A lot of the symptoms that we associate with old age — such as weakness and loss of balance — are actually symptoms of inactivity, not age, says Alicia I. Arbaje, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Geriatrics and Gerontology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
According to research from the Center for Healthy Aging and the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen, it only takes two weeks of not using their legs for young people to lose a third of their muscular strength, leaving them on par with a person who is 40–50 years their senior.
Let’s take a very simple approach. In fact, it is my belief that most who don’t care for self, don’t do so because they have been led to believe that big changes are needed. In fact, better self-care can be done in a few simple steps.
Those steps build momentum, which leads to more time spent on making sure we take care of #1 (our own health!)
Here is are 3 simple things that you can do today to get stronger, have more energy and move better and be a better coach and parent or official.
1. Get more sleep. We don’t get enough sleep. It’s a thing. Poor sleep may directly affect mortality risk and influence risk for cancer and other non-communicable diseases through its impact on immune function, stress response and inflammation, DNA repair, and metabolic and hormonal activity.
2. Drink more water. Eat less sugar. Drink less booze. Eat more vegetables and get enough protein. A billion dollar industry broken down into 5 things. If all we did was attack these 5 things, your energy levels will go through the roof.
3. Get down on the ground and back up 3 times. (I stole this great idea from the great Dan John, and practice it a few times a week with great success)
What do I mean?
Get down using 2 arms to assist and get back up .
Get down using 1 arm to assist and get back up.
If you get really good, get down and up without using your arms to assist.
Start with 3 times, work your way up to 8–10 times. Start from the ground up to mix it up if you want.
Here is an example of how it looks as I worked on this for a while and progressed to a med ball. Again, start using arms, then take 1 away, then to below example.
This activity alone will improve muscular strength, mobility, get you huffing and puffing, and tax you in a way you probably have not done so in a while.
Is this get down & ups as good as 30 minutes of cardio or lifting weights? Probably not. But if you want to improve your self-care and health, this 5–10 minutes will get you feeling better and over a couple of weeks will start to feel easier.
That is progress!!
Then you can move on to something else if you care to.
No big announcement.
No big hairy goal.
A small series of steps to get you on the right path.
Then you can decide what to do next.
Keep it simple. Feel better. No excuses.
More sleep, water, protein and vegetables. Less sugar and booze. Get up and down a few times a day.
Let’s be around so we can enjoy Thanksgiving for many, many years to come!