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- Lifestyle Entrepreneur #45
THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR
Read time - 3 minutes
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Compound Movements
In this edition:
Wellness Tip
Quote
Post from the week
Article - Screen reduction nuggets
Wellness Tip
Fitness should be a top three priority on your list - every day.
That means when you wake up and plan out your day (or even better plan out your next day before going bed), among the multitude of work meetings, work priorities, household chores, kid priorities and activities, and caring for yourself, your fitness activity should stay on your list of things to do during the day.
While agreeing with this statement is an easy leap, putting it into practice is really hard.
So hard only 50% of Americans exercise.
And even high income people have trouble prioritizing it during their family & career building years.
It’s difficult for me too. So difficult I was only mediocre at it in my 30s, even when I was running a bunch of gyms every day.
Because of this core challenge we all face, one of my main areas of interest is finding high utility activities that maximize your available time.
Things like walking meetings that give you more movement during times you’d normally be sitting.
Strength training is one of those areas, where you get unmatched returns on time spent exercising.
For the average person, when given an hour to exercise - I’d almost always recommend some kind of strength training.
If that’s true - what movements give us the most bang for our buck?
#1 is compound movements, which is a guiding principle for strength training.
Compound movements are simple - anything that involves more than one joint.
Instead of curls to train the bicep, do assisted pullups to train the whole back, shoulders, and arms, including the bicep.
Prioritizing these movements not only increases your movement efficiency by involving more muscle groups in less time, they also train your body as a complete system - which helps increase balance, coordination, and flexibility.
The only concern with compound movements - is that when adding load, or weights, you have to pay more consideration to proper form to reduce injury.
This is where trainers, videos, and a bit of study comes into play.
This shouldn’t slow you down, however, as learning the foundational movements is simple and straightforward - it does require a commitment of your time and energy to learn, via a trainer or some kind of tutorial.
Is it worth investing your precious time and money into learning how to do these movements? That’s your choice of course - but I consider it a one time investment that gives you returns for the rest of your life.
Not only in tomorrow’s strength training, but when you’re picking up a bag of rice as a spry 90 year old.
Quote
"Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live." - Jim Rohn
Post
15 Tips on Fatherhood - Link
The dangers of social media and unmanaged screen usage on adult and child minds is becoming more prominent every day.
A recent popular book on the topic, The Anxious Generation, has very specific recommendations for children including no social media before 16.
I think about this issue every day, as a parent of 14-year old twins, a human who has to manage his own usage, and a content creator on social media.
The only people I know who aren’t challenged by this issue - are people without children older than 6, who have completely removed social media from their lives.
While I have some admiration for that lifestyle choice, it’s never felt like an option for me.
One thing I’m sure of - 20 years from now, we’ll look back at this era and laugh at the way we were targeted for social media, the exact same way we laugh at how we were targeted for smoking campaigns.
I’ve tried many tactics to reduce my screentime, and the two that are working best right now for me are:
Clearly set shutdown times for the family - The kids turn in their devices at 7pm everyday. It’s become predictable, they do it voluntarily if I forget, and everyone is better for it. This one is very simple.
Deleting social media apps after usage each day - This works very well if you create content like me. That means making posts, and also engaging with my posts and others via commenting. This is part of my daily activity, and I give myself a set amount of time for the apps each day. Once it’s over, I delete the app. This is the only thing that’s worked for me, including downtime, graying out the screens, etc.
Regardless of tactics - a commitment to managing our screen usage is a critical part of modern life. I’m guessing 100% of you think about it at least weekly now.
Hopefully the above are helpful in your efforts, stay strong!
Talk to you next week,
Mike
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