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Sometimes it seems there’s just not enough time in the day to exercise. If you feel this way, don’t fret. PBRG friend James Altucher, host of the No. 1 podcast on iTunes, The James Altucher Show, has 10 tips for you to pull “mini-workouts” out of your everyday life…
From James Altucher, editor, The Altucher Report: To come up with great ideas, be creative, and live an abundant life, you need to be physically healthy and have lots of energy.
When people say, “be physically healthy,” my gut reaction is, “I don’t want to go to the gym.” But I don’t have to—I just have to be engaged in active motion every day. This is how humans exercised for 3 million years, and it still works.
What you do every day (active motion) is more important than what you do once in a while (hardcore workouts).
Here are the 10 ideas I wrote down for myself to make sure I remain physically active, healthy, and energetic…
1. The body is totally stiff in the morning, and it can use a good stretch. My wife Claudia insists that I do one sitting forward bend every day and I hate it, but I do it anyway because I feel the tension of the hamstrings release as I breathe into it.
There is an easier version, which is to stand up, bend over and grab your elbows, relax the back and breathe there, hanging from the waist down. When you come up, you feel like the world is all shiny and new…
By the way, this is extremely good for digestion and constipation issues.
2. Put a note on your phone (i.e., Google a reminder) that reminds you to relax your jaw, relax your face, relax your mouth, take a deep breath, and even relax the shoulders.
Bet you that just reading that made you do it. It is amazing how often we tense our face and shoulders during the day. That costs you energy you don’t need to spend.
3. Some people use walking machines while writing at their desk. I am very fond of the idea but haven’t tried it yet. What I do instead is take an actual walk in the middle of the day, together with lunch, because it helps me clear the mind and the negativity that accumulates from stress.
When I’m on the phone, I always walk around my house. Some days (depending on my phone calls), it could be miles of walking.
4. I always take the stairs if possible, and we make it a family game to always park the car as far from our destination as possible to get more walking out of the day.
5. We spend most of our lives slouching. We are so attached to computers that our bodies get deformed. We start by curving the back and then sticking the jaw forward to compensate. We are unaware of it moment by moment… and then 30 years later we wonder what happened.
But there is an exercise that solves the issue: Every hour, stand up with feet at hip distance apart, inhale, put your hands on your lower back and look up, then exhale and bend the torso backward slowly… Then stay there for one or two breaths (I usually max out at one-and-a-half breaths), then INHALE to come back up. If you exhale when coming back up, you’ll get dizzy. I do this exercise because it completely has eliminated back pain for me.
6. Whenever you’re standing in line, or waiting for a subway or a ride, or waiting for anything at all, stand on your tiptoes. Balance up there.
This doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a huge balancing act for the whole body and warms up the calves.
Balancing also lights the brain on fire, activates the neurons, and increases creativity.
7. Distribute carrying weight efficiently. I see people in Grand Central Station walking with their right shoulder one foot lower than their left shoulder…
That’s because they are carrying a heaving bag on the right shoulder and they’ve been doing it for years… Amazing how much you can tell by posture.
Don’t do that to yourself. Distribute carrying weight so that both arms have about the same amount of weight. Your body will thank you.
8. Volunteer to do the dishes. This gets you standing and moving instead of sitting. Add laughter to this by listening to a comedian on the free Pandora app.
The trick here is: Make sure the dishes are spotless. There’s something very beautiful about the focus required to wash dishes correctly. It’s good exercise for the brain.
9. Do a few pushups randomly. Don’t even get close to breaking a sweat. Just do a few easy pushups.
10. This may sound like a funny one, but if you have lots of back pain, it may be because your financial issues are stressing you too much.
There is a guy called Sarno who wrote a book that even Howard Stern recommended. Sarno says that too much financial stress on our system blocks blood flow into the tissues that support the structure of the back.
It appears that our back has been hurt, but in reality, we can’t handle the stress.
If this is happening to you, make a plan for dealing with the stress going forward. Don’t try to bury it… Your back will pay.
Reeves’ Note: James just launched a brand-new newsletter called The Altucher Report. It’s unlike any other investment advisory you’ve ever read before. It springs out of a massive socioeconomic change affecting America: the death of the salaried employee. That may sound scary, but it doesn’t have to be. James explains why, right here.