6 Point Checklist for a Better Life/Job/Sport/Event
1. Sleep First and foremost, you need to be sleeping. Sleep is the ultimate recovery and regeneration tool. Sleep helps you learn, process, and retain knowledge, skills, and abilities that you are gathering. There are many figures on how much sleep you need, but a recommendation is 7 to 8 hours of sleep. But it may vary less or more depending on what you experience as "enough." One thing is true though, you will need more sleep if you're under a high load of mental and physical stress (training).
"Hacks" to better sleep: Keep your bedroom cool. The only 2 activities that belong in your bedroom are sleep and sex. No electronics and even the indicator lights for them in your bedroom. Keep your bedroom as close to pitch black and as quiet as possible; use blackout curtains, eye masks, and ear plugs/muffs.
2. Water You can only survive 3 days without water. Your body is composed of 50 to 60% water; it's pretty important that you stay hydrated. Good rule of thumb: drink when you're thirsty...don't when you're not. If you know you're chronically dehydrated, then try this first to see how you feel and perform, say for a week: Drink at least half your bodyweight in ounces of water per day, e.g. 150 pound person drinks at least 75 ounces per day* *add 16 more ounces for every hour of exercise done per day Once you know how that did for you for that week, adjust that amount up or down the next week, and continue to play around with it.
If you find that you're having to go to the bathroom a lot, from the increased amount of water you're drinking, then here's a "hack": Put a couple of pinches of Himalayan Sea Salt in your water bottle you use to drink out of, to help retain that water, as well as to include salt in your body to help with your neural functioning.
Hydration "hack": Use a designated bottle you will always use to fill, carry, and drink water out of. Wrap however many rubber bands you need around the bottle to indicate how many times you will need to fill that up to achieve the minimum amount of water you need to drink per day during your experimentation, e.g. Need to drink 75 ounces...have a 25 ounce bottle...wrap 3 rubber bands around the bottle.
3. Nutrition Simple: "Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruits, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat." - Greg Glassman
Nutrition "hacks": Focus on the Introduction, not Limitation of certain foods: Try thinking about increasing for example, how much vegetables you're eating regularly, instead of having to worry about cutting all sugar out completely at first.
To tie in with the last "hack," start by incrementally reducing the food items you shouldn't be eating, over time.
Both those "hacks" above will help you through your transition to eating Better a little easier, and should not stress your mind and body too much, as compared to immediately implementing extreme measures.
4. Metabolic Conditioning Learn, Practice, and Train your Heart and Lungs' ability to use the proper fuel from the Nutrition listed above in all kinds of time domains and efforts, from short, hard, and fast efforts, to even long slow distance efforts.
Examples: walk, run, bike, swim, row, and ski
5. Gymnastics (Bodyweight) Learn, Practice, and Train your ability to move your body for the productive application of force, through bodyweight movements. You earn your ability to speed up, or do more complex movements (quantitatively and qualitatively) as you are progressively "mastering" your skills.
Examples: (ring)push ups, pull ups, air squats, (ring)rows, hand/headstands, tumbling, pirouettes, holds, climbs, Yoga, and dance.
6. Weightlifting/Throwing (External Objects) Learn, Practice, and Train your ability to move and throw external objects for the productive application of force. You earn your ability to speed up, or do more complex movements (qualitatively and quantitatively, and lift/throw greater loads as you are progressively "mastering" your skills.
Examples: Presses, Weighted Squats, Deadlifts, Weighted Swings, Object Throwing, Clean and Jerk, Snatch, and (Odd Object) Carries.
If you are constantly working on these 6 Points and consistently hitting Points 1-3, then you are 80% there, in terms of improving your life and doing Better in the various roles and responsibilities you assume and events you participate in in your life. If you are progressively increasing your abilities in being able to execute Points 4-6 then you are truly going to thrive and be ultimately a Better version of yourself.
If you need help with any of these, then please contact us!