Cool Down (18 page)

Whatever day it happens to be that you are reading these words, 1,000 Canadian baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964), as well as 7,918 American baby boomers will turn 60 today. Happy birthday! For them, and for those who follow them, the threat of heart disease is ever present. In the opinion of many cardiologists, dieticians, and other professionals, this is due, in part, to a
laissez-faire
attitude towards personal health, combined with the requirements of a busy career and consequently letting exercise slide. As a result, cardiovascular disease (CVD), which includes high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, and stroke is now the single leading cause of death in both Canada and the United States.
¹

Shauna worked for the media department of a large organization. She used to enjoy going to the gym. She saw and felt the benefits of regular workouts—better sleep, better mood, better resistance to colds, overall better feeling. But as the pressures of work became greater, her workouts were always the first thing to be sacrificed. First, occasionally, and then more regularly, she rescheduled them until finally her running shoes started to gather dust.

She said, “Every day the work takes me to 5:30 or 6:00, sometimes later. It doesn't make sense to go to the gym at 6:30. If I did, that would mean I'd not get home until 8:30 or later.”

Shauna was focused on her work, on being busy. But she was not able to perceive that being busy and being productive are not the same things. As we have seen, email, meetings, and distractions make people feel busy, and indeed they may be legitimate components of work. But she was not able to see how speed and overload had blinded her to being able to tell the difference.

When Shauna did an audit of her work patterns, including the most important types of work, the nature and frequency of the emails she was responding to, and the “human element” (the expectations of her boss and of her external and internal clients), she realized that the key work components could be reassigned to specific hours. She applied more conscious control over casual conversations and drop-in visitors, and made a point to not let time slip by. Her careful choice of meals and snacks kept her alertness level high, and most important, she took time to ask her manager outright whether a change to her schedule was possible. She and her manager worked on this together and agreed that she could leave work a half-hour earlier, provided that her key assignments were up to date. She agreed to come in a half-hour earlier on her workout days and most importantly, she made sure to reserve time with her manager once a week, every week, to demonstrate how her productivity had actually improved through this new pattern.

Shauna found she was also better able to deal with her colleagues, some of whom observed her early departure and immediately questioned her loyalty and team spirit. Shauna found she was able to educate her team through communication. She explained to them how the work they needed from her would still be completed on time, that she herself remained available and accountable throughout the day, and she showed them how her open-door policy was not going to be adversely affected. With their needs and concerns met, Shauna was able to condition herself and her colleagues into working well within these slightly modified timelines. Her slightly earlier departure allowed her three workouts a week, and she was still able to get home in time for dinner.

The success factor was not Shauna's dedication to working out; it was that she took the time to slow down and communicate with her manager and with her co-workers. That's what gave her the permission and the freedom to go to the gym.

People often ask me what the best time of day is for exercise. Such a question can be answered, but not simply. There are many factors to take into account, since not all exercise is equal. Running outdoors is much more difficult than running on a treadmill, due to sidewalk friction, air resistance, and changes in surface angle and grade. Lifting weights for three sets of 20 reps has a different impact on muscle development than six sets of 10 reps. Doing cardiovascular exercise with a mid-level active heart rate for 30 minutes has profoundly different effects on the body than does high-speed sprinting for 20 minutes.

As people age, their bodies react differently to food (including excess food), sleep, stress, excess, deprivation, and exercise. That's why it's so important to know yourself; to slow down long enough to hear your body tell you what it wants and when. Are you morning oriented? If so, are you able to get in a workout before work? Some people find it easy to get up at 5:00 a.m. and hit the gym. It's an excellent way to start a day. Others, however, cannot do that. Many people cannot face exercise first thing in the morning, no matter how good it might be for them. So, then, what remains for morning-oriented people, whose best time for energy and activity is the morning, but who can't get to the gym before work and who also can't delay work to spend time at the gym? Does that mean they're doomed to not get any exercise at all? That need not be the case.

Some people may be able to put into effect the same type of flexibility that Shauna demonstrated in the case above, but in reverse. They might renegotiate start times so they can arrive at the office a little later, and, if need be, work a little later to balance it out. Others might be able to find the time within the workday. More and more employers are providing on-site fitness centers or corporate health club memberships along with the permission to use them. Refer, once again to the AstraZeneca example in Chapter 4.

Still others may be able to adopt Shauna's situation more directly by setting up staggered departure times, and by communicating the value and benefits of doing so to their manager and team. When the only time available for exercise is late afternoon, even if late afternoon is not your optimum time, it is still possible to make best use of the opportunity by slowing down and choosing a food intake schedule for the day more carefully.

In the
Fortune
magazine article “How I Work,” the CIO of Pimco puts it as follows:

All exercise, when done correctly, is good. But the benefits of
cooling down
reveal themselves in the exercise room just as they do in other areas. For people who are looking to burn off that spare tire of stored fat during the workweek, slow exercise is far more efficient than a high-impact workout. Fast aerobics may be good for getting the cardiovascular system in shape, but they don't burn stored energy as efficiently. Fat burning happens when exercise is of lower impact but longer duration, for instance, 20 to 30 minutes on a cycling machine or treadmill, three times a week.

Most people who exercise regularly notice by the second week that the exercise itself becomes addictive. The body gets used to exercise, and starts to “ask” for it. However for the first few days, getting into a habit may seem difficult. One of the best approaches is to buddy up—to make a commitment with a friend to visit the gym together. This makes procrastination or rescheduling more difficult since it would inconvenience two people, not just one.

Also, consider entering your workouts into your calendar as recurring activities. This
reifies
the event, making it real both in your own mind as well as in the minds of other people in your working world.

Use a log to keep track of your workouts, laps, minutes, etc. A log is useful in four distinct ways:

Do you find long workouts boring? Is that one of the reasons why it is so difficult to motivate yourself to do it daily? It's true. Thirty minutes on an exercise bike can seem extremely dull to anyone who has just stepped out of their high-speed working world. But there are solutions. Here are a few:

For people who are looking to build more muscle or develop muscle tone, it may surprise you to learn that lifting weights slowly is far better than doing “power sets” or using the “clean and jerk” approach. Lifting weights more slowly enables you to employ proper technique, which ensures the right muscle groups are being used and challenged. The human body is capable of using numerous other muscle groups to compensate or share the load. This means that many people who invest the time to work out with weights waste a great deal of it through improper technique. (The actual technique and motion required is best learned by taking the time to ask a qualified trainer at your health club to work with you.) Proper,
cool
technique also reduces the risk of injury, since the weight is moved in the proper direction, offering the right type of resistance to the muscle. In addition to using the wrong muscle groups and/or risking injury, people who work their weights or weight machines too quickly tend to use momentum, not strength to move the weight. This is a subtle, unintentional form of cheating that reduces the demand on the muscles being trained as soon as the weight gets moving. A good weight movement should be slow and steady on the way out and on the way home, using care and focus to keep it safely in line. This, of course, reflects the
slow
principle perfectly: the difference between doing something of substance versus the false satisfaction of just feeling busy. True productivity, both at the desk and in the gym, really does require a
cool
approach.