Because the internet is loaded with posts about how to reduce stress in one’s life, this post is going to focus on how to handle the stress you have. I thought this might be important to blog about because 1) some people can’t reduce the stress in their lives because of what they do for a living or 2) even if we are reducing stress on the front-end, it’s still useful to know how to handle it on the back-end as well. This will be a quick rambling entry that addresses some of the things I do to mitigate the constant wear and tear I’m putting on my body from 70-80 hour work weeks, sleep deficits, loads of travel, and high managerial demand. I know the many ways to reduce stress on the front-end but quite frankly, most of the ways are already in place in some fashion and / or are not realistic for my situation. So here are some of the little things I try to do:

• Inside-Out Care:
  • Exercise: I try to exercise 6 days a week with a decent balance of strength training, aerobic and metabolic fitness training. This primes the endocrine system to fight stress, keeps the metabolism high, makes sleep higher quality, and gives you an outlet for stress. Thankfully, I don’t have to go far to get in a great workout…I own Athletic Lab, a sport performance training center with all the fitness and training toys I could want.
  • Super foods: I try to consume the following in moderation every day: dark chocolate, red wine, white tea, and coffee. Likewise, I try to eat berries, oily fish, healthier nut varieties (almonds, walnuts, etc) at least a couple times a week. These are all great for reducing reducing the effects of high stress levels on the body.
  • Eat right: In addition to the super foods, I eat a high protein diet rich in vegetables, meats, and beans. I avoid process foods of all kinds and anything that is or could be white (bread, pasta, rice) for 6 days out of the week.
• Outside-In Care: While eating well, exercising and getting regular doses of so-called super foods will do the bulk of the work, make sure you take care of the outside shell too. I’m a no-fuss guy and hate to use froo-froo body wash and lotion products but I still want to take care of the shell of my body too.
  • Shaving: Shaving the face with a blade rather than an electric razor is a manly man way of exfoliating and following it up with some moisturizer for your hide will keep you looking good.
  • Moisturize: Skin is the biggest organ of the body and it subconsciously tells others a lot about our health and well-being. I’ve been using Lubriderm men’s 3-in-1 lotion because I can use it post-shave, on my face, and on my body…a plus because I don’t want to use 3 different lotions. The path of least resistance will be the path most easily adhered to.
• Physical contact: Do it anyway you want (it can be as g-rated or x-rated as you want) but there’s an increasing amount of research that suggests that humans NEED some form of physical touch (could be with a child, your spouse, or even a pet) as a means of reducing anxiety levels.
• Work: yes, I said work. If you’re not in super-busy workaholic group you can probably safely overlook this one, but those that have as much on there plates as me will appreciate that often the best way to reduce stress is to actually work. Because when you DON’T work, it’s constantly on your mind that the work you’re not doing is accumulating. Sometimes doing work is less stressful than not doing work.
• Allow yourself a little down time: I don’t get much down time but when I do I use it effectively. I sleep, I spend time with my family, I do things I really want to do. Likewise, I typically only get one half to one day a week off and I use this as a ‘cheat day’ from my otherwise very healthy diet. It makes the other days easier to adhere to and gives a foodie like me something to really look forward to.

Related articles

• 10 Tips to Handle Job Stress (futurefocused.wordpress.com)
• Want To Live To 100? Try To Bounce Back From Stress : NPR (mentalflowers.wordpress.com)
• There’s No “Supplement” For Stress Management (physicalrenewal.wordpress.com)
• Stress at its worse… (sluphojo.wordpress.com)

For the past 15+ years of my life I’ve lived practically invincible. I drive too fast. I LOVE food and eat too much (~5-8,000 calories / day). I sleep too little (5-6 hrs / night). I work too much (currently about 80 hrs / week and never less than 60 over that time span). I rarely vacation or take time off. Most everyone I know is amazed or shocked by the lifestyle that I’ve been able to live and remain healthy. In fact, I’ve only been sick about 2 times in the past 10 years and other than a handful of speeding tickets I don’t have much to show for my hard lifestyle. I’ve never actually felt I was invincible….I’ve just lived that way because I never had a problem.

I’ve always gotten away with it just fine and it’s allowed me to be super productive. Last Friday, that all came to a screeching halt. Last week I had my first big health hiccup and it’s forced me to essentially become a different person. Some stomach problems have left me unable to hold down any food and I’m in constant discomfort. I’m hypocaloric (didn’t eat a meal for 4 days), weak, tired (sleeping up to 16 hours in one day), and generally unproductive compared to my usual self. I not only can’t eat the foods that I love (insanely spicy foods, coffee, lots of red meat, etc)…I can’t eat at all. I’ve been forced to eat foods I would never normally eat (crackers, soup broth) because it’s the only thing my stomach can bare. Consequently I’ve lost about 15 pounds in the 10 days since onset of symptoms. Driving fast is out the window too…it makes me sick.  And I’m sleeping (albeit not well) any chance I can get. Needless to say, I have to live as a practically a different person than I was just 10 days ago.

I point all this out to say that I’ve come to realize that there’s always a final straw. I had an endoscopy last week that showed significant damage to my stomach lining. The biopsy results have yet to come back but it could be a variety of things all with deep roots. The two months preceding the onset of these problems was particularly rough for work and travel. During this time span, my business has seen tremendous business growth, which is great, but it came growing pains that upped work levels and minimized the already minimal down time and sleep I’m usually able to take. I also had a crazy travel / speaking engagement schedule with 6 presentations in a row which compounded things. While I seemed to manage through this period just fine, I have no doubt that it must have compromised my immune function and ultimately lead to my current health issues.

I know the handful of faithful readers of this blog often push the limits like I do. Quick lesson – make sure you take the foot off the pedal every now and then.

Related articles

• Food Stress and Eustress (simplemeditation4health.wordpress.com)

We use free trial sessions at Athletic Lab to bring in new potential clients because we believe that once they experience the level of service we provide that they will be sold. It also allows the potential client an opportunity to ‘try before they buy’ which is important to us because we recognize that what we provide isn’t for everyone and we don’t want clients to ever have buyers remorse. When offering a free trial we’ve learned a couple things:

1. Don’t let those who aren’t potential clients sign up for the free trial because. We sometimes get people from out-of-town who try to use us for the free trial with no intent of signing up as a client. Now we steer people with a non-local address to pay a drop-in fee rather than get a free ride.
2. Put your best foot forward. We actively sell me in our marketing. When I am not the trainer doing the free trial our conversion rate for those people becoming clients is less than a third of when I do the free trial. I don’t think this is a reflection on our other trainers as I know they do an excellent job. I believe it’s more likely a case that the potential client is coming in with an expectation of working with me and if that isn’t met there’s a feeling of disappointment. Kinda like if you went to the best steakhouse in town expecting to get a steak and they’re all out of the steak. So instead you’re served an awesome tuna filet….it didn’t matter that the tuna was great, you came in expecting steak and are disappointed because of it.
3. Be prepared.
4. Welcome and follow-up. Most of the time we try to send out a welcome email prior to their visit and a follow-up email or call to see how they liked there visit. At the very list this adds a personal touch and allows us to gain valuable feedback from the person after the client that might help us secure future clients.
5. Don’t be pushy. The last thing we want is become used car salesman or a typical sleeze-ball fitness gym salesperson. We don’t sell gimmicks or talk about membership before or during the session.
6. Provide feedback. After the session, we give information to insure the client is informed. For us, a client that is informed is will recognize the value of what we have to offer.
7. Ask for the sale. Many people don’t do this. Once the session is done we try to ask when we’ll see them back again and how they enjoyed the session.  This allows us to attain feedback and get someone off of the proverbial fence.

Related articles

• How to Convert Website Visitors into Customers! (inewsindia.com)
• 4 Metrics to Measure Your Best Leads (hubspot.com)

Sometimes my schedule is so tight that despite owning a training center with more weights than I know what to do with, I find it hard to fit in time to workout. In fact, there are some days when I’ve spent most of the day where people work out and all my work is done and I really have to geek up the motivation to hammer out a workout. Lately though I’ve set some personal goals that center around a return to competitive sport and I want to try to get as fit and prepared as I can in what limited time that I have. Gone are the days when I could work out 3-5 hours every day. Now I have to find whatever time I can to churn out mini-workouts. And then try to string together 3, 4, or 5 of them in a day. Here’s some tips on how to stay fit on a tight schedule:

• If you have 1 free minute you can do something. Don’t fool yourself in to thinking that a workout will only be effective if it’s 20+ minutes long. If you have a spare minute stand up and knock out 60 bodyweight squats, or pushups, or lunges…you get the idea. This intermittent work will help stoke the energy burning fire that is your metabolism and over time these short bouts will add up to considerable volume.
• If you have 10 minutes you can get in a pretty serious workout. I’ve started doing things like “10 in 10″ where I do 10 sets of 1 rep on a given multi-joint lift and work up to a daily maximum. Or I might do 5 x 5 in 10 minutes working up to a heavy workload by the 3rd set. In addition to these types of heavy lifting (which would probably require you either get creative or have a gym in your office) you can also do hard metabolic conditioning workouts. For example, if I have 5 minutes before my next appointment or meeting I might try to knock out a 5 minute time trial on a concept 2 rower, or see how many pullups I can do in 5 minutes, or do a mini-circuit with some combination of strength and aerobic endurance.
• Consider running or biking to work. I now bike to work at least 3 times a week and try to run once a week.  This takes a little bit longer than driving but it ensures that I’m getting in more workout time while doing something that I’d have to do anyhow (commute to work).
• Choose your exercises wisely. You’ll get more bang for your buck from multi-joint full body exercises than single joint isolation exercises. This means doing exercises like squats, pullups, dead lifts, olympic lifts (if you know how to do them safely), pressing movements, etc. Likewise, free weights beat machines every day because they incorporate stabilizing muscles and require greater coordination and balance.
• Crank the intensity. You can get fit on less than an hour of training a week if you’re willing to REALLY push yourself. This means going beyond that point when you want to stop and take a rest or catch your breath.
• Vary the training modality. Include running, biking, rowing, weight lifting, calisthenics, etc. This will prevent the body and mind from stagnating.
• Get something in early in the day. Even if it’s just 5-10 minutes of exercise. This will ensure you never go a day without some level of activity.
• Work all sides of the energy-system fitness

  and speed-power continuum. Not only will this ensure you’re developing holistic fitness but by alternating workouts that focus on different energy systems or different aspects of the speed-power continuum you’ll be able to push hard more frequently without worrying about over training because the recuperative resources for each workout will not overlap as much.

• Try to fit in multiple small workouts throughout the day. If you work in an office setting and don’t have the luxury of going to work in shorts and a t-shirt every day like I do, then just do a little intermittent exercise every 60 to 90 minutes. Enough that will rev up the metabolism and produce a cumulative training effect but little enough that you won’t be showing up to your next meeting with sweat stains around your collar.
• Try to get in a mini-workout before you eat. This should help stoke the metabolism and you’ll process your food more efficiently and be able to enjoy food with less worry of weight gain.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Get OFF the Couch and Start Exercising! (diet-blog.com)
• 5 Reasons to Try Kettlebells (fitsugar.com)
• You Asked: How to Start Strength Training (fitsugar.com)

A simple phrase but one that’s really rung true for me. Right now I’m working around 80-90 hours a week off getting my training center, Athletic Lab, off the ground. So far things are going well and we’re meeting early revenue predictions even if the revenue isn’t coming from the exact places we expected. My days now start at 7 to be training or doing administrative work by 8. Training adult fitness and then the elite group takes me up until noon. Then I have the luxury of an hour and a half to 2 hour lunch break when I can go home, see the fam, and take a short nap. Then back to Athletic Lab for more training, emails and phone calls that typically don’t stop until 7. On Wednesday’s they go all the way until 10 PM because of a late night pole vault session. Somewhere in that mix I try to throw in a couple mini-workouts (I do own a gym…no excuse to be out of shape!). I try to not do any work between 7 and 10 PM but then after that I’m back at it handling correspondence trained athletes, managing marketing / social media strategy, placing inventory orders, shipping customs, answering emails, etc until 2 or 3 AM. I train people both Saturday and Sunday morning and also spend much of the weekend doing the ongoing improvements to Athletic Lab that my OCD brain requires to stay sane. By most counts that would be an excessively long work week but I love it. I get to spend more time with my family than I have in the past 3 years because I see them for lunch, they’re often in at Athletic Lab with me during the day and although I work on weekends now I have a lot more flexibility and control over my time and there’s a lot more to do in the Triangle than the last couple places we’ve lived. Also, knowing that you’re working for something you truly love to do makes the work a lot less like work and a lot more like play. Have you found that thing you love to do?

So to continue where I left off yesterday, much has happened in the last month or so. First the Impact facility opportunity fell through due to a complete staff overhaul from the ground up. Then things quickly picked up as the very people who had brought me in to that deal (only to later be laid off) partnered with me and we made a whirl wind tour of every possible option in the triangle area….leasing our own facility, having one built from scratch, or moving in to an existing sport or fitness facility. All scenarios had strengths and weaknesses but one particular opportunity clearly came to the fore. We had several meetings with another huge sports complex (to go unnamed by request) in the area and the owner was VERY interested in what we were trying to do. He has a pre-existing business operating that would be very complimentary to what I am already doing and that would benefit from a high-profile, high-end training center. The problem was that the facility that he owned was already spoken for….leased out for several years. The current leaseholder wasn’t interested in giving up space (we’d asked for 10k sqft) and losing what he had developed over the past couple years so it looked like it wasn’t going to work. Instead, it seems that it may work out better than any other possibility as the owner is so interested in what we have to offer that he is researching building a new neighboring facility from the ground up to house my training center along with some complimentary medical groups (massage, ART, chiro, orthos, etc). This means that it can be ‘built to order’ and made just how I like it. The drawback is that it will take some time to build and get the medical groups at the table. The estimated time that I’ve been given is 6-9 months. I would love for it to be that short but realistically, it’s probably more like 9-18 months. So in the meantime, I know I can’t sit around doing nothing in the HOPE that it panned out. I knew I needed to find a temporary facility which is another story altogether. Ont that I’ll discuss tomorrow.

Yesterday was a great day, personally and professionally. I spent the morning playing with my daughter while I waited for videos to upload, rip, convert, etc for use on the web. Then in the afternoon, I got an email granting my dissertation extension request, and finally Axel and I had a major conference call with a supplement company that we’re about to collaborate with. This company is very like minded with HPC and has already established themselves as leaders in the field of sport nutrition. This is exciting not just because we’ll be able to provide supplements to our HPC Elite team athletes but also for the collaborative marketing and comprehensive athletic development plans that it looks like we’re going to be doing together. I can’t say too much at this point but this is one of the bigger steps that we’ll take as a company if things pan out as we all discussed yesterday. We have another call today with the company to mull over what was discussed yesterday and see if anyone has any new ideas to bring to the table. They are ready to move on this and so are we. Giddyup!