What do you want in life???

To feel better, look better naked, be more present, be healthier, sleep better…

Those are pretty much everyones goals with their health and fitness pursuits, and I’m always thinking how can we move the needle forward for you in one or all of those domains.

Movement is a first principle of being a human (along with sleeping and eating). You have to move in order to be a human! (Sounds obvious right, but that’s why it’s a fundamental!!)

In fact, you cannot express your tissues at a normal level unless you move them on a regular basis (it’s called mechanotransduction for you terminology junkies).

If no movement is present, your body and your tissues will de-regulate and not work properly.

Think about it… That’s your achilles, your discs, your joints… You have to load your body in order for your body to be a body, and do what a body is supposed to do.

Things are fundamentally changing for us… we have netflix, our phone, instagram, skip the dishes… These things are fundamentally changing us as human beings, helping us remain stationary objects in dark rooms somewhere…

So let’s say you can do all these amazing movements we do in our gym, and you don’t eat the bun on your hamburger, but you still don’t feel good and you’re still not sleeping…

Well this problem becomes less confusing when we come back to the First Principles of Being a Human.

BECAUSE AS A HUMAN:

• You need to sleep.
• You need to move.
• You need to eat.

And moving means walking. You need to walk!

That 10,000 steps per day, that’s not fitness bullshit, thats how much movement you need to decongest your tissues, make your feet strong, your body work, and that’s the minimum therapeutic dose! (Think of it in the same way as if you take enough vitamin c you wont get scurvy or if you take enough vitamin d you wont get rickets).

Thats the minimum dose! 10,000 steps.

And unfortunately most adults are way under that, less than 5000 steps per day – and you can’t make this up in your 1 hour gym workout. That’s your workout. That’s not your movement for the day. These are 2 separate categories. How does this change how you view your steps now?

So all of a sudden, you go for a run or you workout at BEFIT, because you want to lose weight, but you don’t have tissues that can handle this stress and you get injured…

So when we start looking at these principles: sleep, eat, move…

How can you improve them all?

How can you improve your sleep/rest?

When you have to move a certain amount of time during the day to have the desire to fall asleep.

Do you move enough for this?

CASE IN POINT:
When elite military groups have sleep problems…

They track:

• how much movement they are getting
• how much sleep they are getting

Then the first intervention is to tell the soldiers that they need to move around more.

*****Pause for effect*****

These are the most elite soldiers in the world, moving around all day and the solution for them to sleep better is to walk more.

When you regularly get past that 10,000 steps, it makes you fatigued enough so that when you go to bed you can fall asleep. And when you sleep more, you start operating at 90-100% not a 70% caffeinated zombie.

Need more help?

Foam rolling 10 minutes before you go to bed is also great for sleeping. Think about how relaxed you feel after a massage – it will trick your nervous system into chilling out.

Conclusion:

The solutions for you to do more work, look better naked, be more productive at work, sleep better, pump out more watts on the bike are simple.

• Get up
• Have some purpose (what’s your goal?)
• Eat more protein and vegetables
• Eat less carbs
• Move
• Be mature with your fitness choices (don’t do stuff you are not ready for)
• Sleep better (at least 7 hours)

Its not rocket science. It ain’t sexy and you can’t sell it.

But it works. And you can do it right now.

Committed to your success,
Josh Saunders, BS, CSCS
BEFIT
Voted Langley’s Best Gym 2011-2018