Transcription
If you hate exercise and you don't have time to work out, this video is for you. So many people just don't have time to exercise. They have a very busy lifestyle and so this video is for that person.
Working with tens of thousands of people over decades, I realize that most people are not lazy. That's not their problem. I think the biggest reason why people give up is because the exercise that they're doing doesn't align with their biology. Just hear me out.
If you tell someone you have to drive to a gym, find parking, pay for the gym, get on a treadmill for 45 minutes, which is very artificial. A lot of people have resistance to that because it's just so unnatural. Not to mention, we're wired to avoid pain and boredom, and that's very boring, and sometimes it could be very painful. But what I'm going to show you today is a much easier way to inject exercise into your lifestyle without feeling like you're even exercising. So, let's go through the list.
Number one, every hour you're on the computer, okay? You take a break and for just 3 minutes, you do a high-intense exercise, whether it's push-ups, burpees, any high-intensity exercise just for 3 minutes. So, if you're on the computer for 8 hours, okay, times 3 minutes, that is going to add up. The benefit of these short workouts are huge and they're definitely equivalent to a full workout. And it's something that everyone can do because it's just a few minutes squeezed into your current schedule because it's very, very bad to sit at your desk for eight hours and I've done it for years.
All right, number two. How about a 4-second workout? Can you afford 4 seconds? Of course, we're not just talking about 4 seconds. We're talking about doing a 4-second workout 20 times in a given day. And I'm talking about a high-intensity 4-second type workout, whether it's jumping rope or sprinting. This type of workout is very therapeutic to the body because you're creating this wave approach and you're spiking your pulse rate in a high-intensity way. Only four seconds. So, it's very easy to do, but you just do it spread out over time 20 times. Anyone can do a 4-second workout. You just do it repetitively because, number 13, if you make your goal [clears throat] ridiculously small, it makes it doable. Something is better than nothing and it does add up.
Okay. Number three, 15 minutes every week of weight training can create significant improvement on your muscles. 15 minutes once a week. This is another thing that I think most people can do. And I'm talking about working as many muscles as you can in one workout. And 15 minutes is not a long time, but it'll create a significant effect on your muscles. Especially as we're getting older, we have what's called age-related muscle loss. It's called sarcopenia. And the way that you counter that is by working your muscles.
Let's talk about number four. A lot of people are on the phone. Do you get on the couch while you're on the phone? Do you sit down? No. You should be walking around, pacing around on your phone, going for a walk. That way, you can kill two birds with one stone.
Number five, when you're watching TV, don't sit on your couch. Sit on the floor. I did a video on this. One of the best tests for mortality is to be able to get down on the floor and get off the floor without using your hands. A lot of people can't do it, but if you start practicing that as you get older, it's going to help your longevity. So, these are all simple ways of countering the effect of age on our body. One of the good positions would be a squat position. That's another thing that will actually open up the flexibility of your hips. It'll help your posture. It'll help the strength of your legs. And so, it's an exercise that I personally am doing myself. At first, it was really difficult. Now, it's becoming easier.
All right. Number six, doing work outside on a daily basis. Exposing yourself to the sun while you're doing physical work. Whether it's in the garden or you're fixing something. What I do a lot of times is I will get an axe and I will go cut down a small tree that's dying in the woods on my property. I have a very thick woods and there's always some dead trees. I will work on cutting that down with an axe. It's a great workout. It doesn't take me a long time. I'm outside and so being outside you get oxygen. You get the sun. What do you get from the sun? You get serotonin increase. You get nitric oxide for the arteries. You get vitamin D. You get infrared, which will increase your mitochondria. So, this is one of my favorite things and I highly recommend everyone get out there at least a half hour or an hour a day at least.
Number seven, soleus push-ups. What's the soleus muscle? That is one of your calf muscles and it's a very unique muscle and it doesn't get tired. And you can actually underneath your desk when you're sitting, you can raise your knee up and bring it down pumping the soleus muscle both alternately or at the same time. But what's really unique about that muscle, there's some research to show that it can help balance your insulin and blood sugar, which is quite interesting. And so this is another simple hack that everyone should do while they're at their desk. So they're not just sitting there, you know, doing the work. They're actually killing two birds with one stone.
Let's talk about number eight, walking after each meal. This is another thing I highly recommend. After you eat, go for a walk. Go for a 15-minute walk to burn off any sugar that you just consumed in your diet because if you consume some sugar and you don't burn it off, guess what? It's going to be stored as fat.
Number nine is just an extra thing you can do. You're adding more weight to the body. They have these weighted vests and some of them are 5 lb, 10 lb, 20 lb up to 50 lb, which actually adds more resistance to your workout. And it's just another extra little thing that you can do if that interests you.
Number 10 is using creatine. This is a supplement you can get and you combine this with strength training. It will help you get more energy and strength when you're working out because one of the barriers that people have is I don't have enough energy to work out. So this can give you some more energy to work out and also enhance your performance. A couple other things that you could do to get more energy is to take more magnesium. Not only is it good for relaxing your muscles and helping you sleep and preventing cramps, Charlie horses, but it's also essential for making energy. So, magnesium is important and also vitamin B1. B1 also can help increase your energy. And there's one more thing that can increase your energy and that's potassium. And just as a side note to that, if you are tired, the only exercise I would recommend is walking, not any high intensity. And I'm talking about mainly tiredness from a lack of sleep.
Okay. 11 has to do with just the thoughts about exercise. So many people are into this mindset like, I know I need to exercise. I'm going to get around to it. What they should be doing is have a different mindset of I am someone who is in motion. So basically you want to put yourself in the state where you're already that person, right? Not like I'm working towards it because then you're always going to be working towards it.
Let's talk about number 12. A lot of people try to lose weight to get healthy, but that's not the way to do it. You want to first get healthy to lose weight. You don't get healthy when you take a drug to artificially lose weight. Well, right now there's a class action suit having to do with blindness because of that drug. A lot of people exercise to lose weight. What they should do is they should focus on their health and have weight loss as a byproduct. If you have your goal to lose weight and you don't lose weight the first week, you're going to be frustrated. You're going to give up. But if your goal is to be healthy and you don't lose weight, but you feel stronger and you have more energy and your skin looks better, that means it's working. It's just a matter of time before you lose weight. A lot of people as they exercise, they build more muscle because they are coming out of this atrophy state. And with more muscle comes more weight. With more exercise comes more solidity of your bones. So you actually get more bone strength. And the two big factors that I like to focus on are strength and the loss of appetite, especially as you combine this with going low carb and doing intermittent fasting and then adding exercise on top of that.
Now I've already talked about 13. Any goals that you have, if they're too big, just break down the goal to tiny goals and make it easier for you to get there.
Let's talk about 14. There's something called NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Instead of taking the elevator, you're taking the stairs. Instead of parking very close to a store, you're parking further away to walk. Instead of sitting at your desk, get one of those standing desks where you're standing. You're adding more effort. Our bodies were designed and developed for a lot of motion. Okay? And the problem in modern day time is we don't have a lot of motion. We're so sedentary. So, this is just a simple technique for that.
Number 15 is kind of what we talked about here, but micro-workouts. A lot of times I get busy with a lot of different projects, but I always will do a short little tiny workout and sometimes it's only a few minutes and then I might squeeze in another workout a little bit later and then another workout later. So these micro-workouts do accumulate and sometimes they're actually better than a full workout because you're creating this nice spike in a wave of intensity, but you're allowing your body to rest.
16. Change your environment. Let's say, for example, in a part of your house, you have a door frame and you put a pull-up bar in there. So, every time you go into that room, you have to do four pull-ups. Or let's say you have an exercise band close to your couch where you're watching TV and you have to do some band exercise. Or let's say you have a yoga mat next to your bed. Every time before you go to bed, you do some stretches. I was trying to talk to my wife about this. I can't get her agreement on this, but I was thinking about building a climbing wall that I have to get to my office by climbing around the room. That way, I can get a good workout and I don't have to walk through the living room. But she didn't really go for it. I'm going to still work on her. Maybe she'll let me do it.
Now, 17. If we look at the difference between a high-intensity interval training versus a long jog, go for the high-intensity interval training. There's a lot more benefit. If we're looking at time and a lack of time, like I don't have time to go for an hour jog, but I definitely have time for a 10-minute high-intensity interval training. I can squeeze that in any different time. And so, the combination of the high intensity and using multiple muscle groups at the same time can create huge changes in your health that you can't get from these long jogs. Some of these athletes that are long-distance runners, they develop calcification in their arteries because they get inflammation in the arteries from all the stress of that exercise. There was a certain test that I had a while ago called a metabolomic test. And when they tested me, they noticed a high level of inflammation and they noticed a very low level of vitamin C. And I go, "Wait a second. I I consume a lot of vitamin C in my diet. Eating perfectly. What is going on?" And what was going on was I was overtraining and I didn't even know it. I love to exercise. Exercise gives me a lot of energy, but I like to push myself and sometimes I don't even realize the soreness that's going on my body. All I did was cut back on the workout a little bit and do long walks and then I worked out intensely every other day and my vitamin C went to normal without changing my diet and the inflammatory markers went down. This also brings up another point about sleep. If your sleep sucks, you're not going to get benefits from all the things you're doing. You can control your own health with lifestyle changes.
Okay. Number 18, get a buddy or a trainer. Working out with someone can increase accountability. Getting someone to help you and push you. Super important, especially since they have the techniques and the knowledge and the experience to be able to coach you correctly.
Number 19, you want to pair what you should be doing with what you want to do. Let's say there's a great interesting podcast you want to listen to. Basically play it on your phone on the speakerphone and go for a long hike, okay, through nature while you listen to the podcast or play the podcast while you're working out at the gym. If there's a great Netflix movie you want to watch or it's on Prime or it's on TV, go ahead and do your workout right in your living room while you're watching this program or exercise during the commercials. Now, I know with my wife, she hates the treadmill and so with her, she's way more motivated to do this dance routine than just to keep it boring. One of the best tests to look at fitness, it's called V2 max. And V2 max is the amount of oxygen your cells can consume. We need oxygen to make energy. That's why we need oxygen, okay, to make ATP. And so the last step of this whole biochemical machine requires oxygen. One simple way to do it is to measure your resting pulse rate. You want it nice and low, like 70 or maybe even 65. But I just wanted to mention this V2 max because it's a really cool test to be able to tell you where you're at with your fitness.
Number 20, eccentric exercises. If I were to take two dumbbells and do curls, this is concentric. I'm contracting my muscle. When I let the arm down and elongate the muscle. This is called eccentric. So you want to look at eccentric type motion or movement as like the brakes, it's the muscles that are trying to stop something. So if you're going to walk down the hill, you're using a lot of your eccentric muscles slowing you down, kind of the brake system. If you're going to run up the hill, you're going to use your concentric muscles. If you were to go into a push-up position and slowly let yourself down, that's another example of this eccentric motion. If you want to see faster improvement in your physiology, in your muscles, you should focus more on this. The strength of this system is like 40 to 60% stronger. Okay, number one. And it also creates a massive neural nerve adaptation. So, it really causes your nervous system to learn and adapt. But what's really amazing about this motion is that you get two to three times the mechanical tension on your muscles. Not just one half of your muscles, on the entire muscle structure. Okay? The whole dynamic. You have to realize mechanical tension is the primary thing that stimulates muscle growth and strength. And it's the single most effective exercise for chronic tendonopathy, which are basically problems with your tendons. It's a great therapy for anything related to tendon problems. You also increase stem cells. On top of all those benefits, it is the absolute best thing to slow down age-related muscle loss. That's called sarcopenia. And I will put some links down below of how to do some of these exercises, but I wanted to put this on your radar to make you more aware that there are certain types of exercise that you can get more benefit than other types of exercises. So, I created this other video to get the maximum benefit from exercise, but focusing more on your diet in this video right here. So, check it out right now.