Hi guys, Kris from Custom Fitness here, your personal trainer in Amarillo.
Right now it’s the end of the day, so this may to today but wanted to give you some food for thought for tomorrow. Especially since it’s getting close to the end of the week when we tend to to drift off to dream about the weekend – especially if you have the 9-5 type office gig. Today I am bringing you tips for how to not lose your mental focus during work. If this is you and you’d like more information or you have questions about these tips, give us a call: 806-322-3188.
Sometimes you feel like you’re busy, but you’re not really being productive and you can’t quite figure out why. There’s several things that we can look at. The most obvious of which is did you have enough sleep the night before? If not,that’s going to affect you. I know people who can take a catnap in their car during a break or will drive home for lunch to catch a few ZZZs. That’s great if you can, but not everyone has that opportunity. Raising your mentality and focus without a nap can be handled by drinking your water. When you’re dehydrated you can start to lose your ability to concentrate and comprehend. This happens with as little as 2% fluid loss. The least amount your body should be hydrated is 50%. Beginning at 48-49% hydration or lower you start to lose your mental faculties. You want to boost your mental abilities up; go ahead and drink your water.
If you haven’t had food in a while this can also cause focus depletion. Maybe you skipped your lunch, you’re trying to make it to a late lunch or maybe you just haven’t eaten enough and you’re feeling kind of funny. Go ahead and try some protein mixed in with some veggies.This will help to boost your energy and your mental focus.
What if you have you have had your water and you’ve eaten your food, but nothing has changed? It could be due to the screen. If you’re a person who is on the computer all day long, it is affecting your brain. Find opportunities to take a break to go outside and bask in the sunshine and fresh air. Today was obviously not the perfect day for that as it was raining, but there’s some places that you can still go to walk. If there’s a stairwell in your building, go walk the stairwell. Go do some laps around the lobby. Do whatever you can to get up and move. It can be a little as five minutes, but if you can get in 15 that would be great. Take a walk to the bathroom and back. Pretend you forgot your phone in there, and go back again, and get in a couple of laps that way. Whatever you need to do to make sure that you are getting up and getting the blood flowing away from a screen. Screens really wear us down. We don’t notice it all the time, but have you ever sat down to pay a bill online and suddenly two hours later you find yourself on Youtube watching nonsense? Screens suck the life out of us so we want to step away from sometimes to reset our minds, our focus, and our energy.
Talking about exercise and getting outside for a walk…What do you do when you can’t get outside? Maybe your work doesn’t allow you to leave the premises during office hours or maybe it is pouring rain outside. I want to show you some exercises that can be done in a smaller office. You have some areas where you can tweak or modify to adapt to your space, but here are just a few ideas.
- Walk/run in place
- Heel kicks – pulling your heels all the way to your glutes while running in place
- Freestanding squats
- Overhead reaches. You don’t need weights for this, your goal isn’t building muscle, you want to just get moving. Tense your muscles as you go by pretending you are pushing something overhead.
- Lunges
- Jumping in place
One of my favorite things is using what you have. I am a personal trainer in Amarillo, I don’t make beaucoup bucks, so I often get creative when I’m looking for ways to workout. Look around your office, do you have a table, a windowsill or somewhere you can prop yourself up? If yes, you can easily do some elevated pushups. After that, do some elevated mountain climbers by bringing the knees to chest and engage your core.
Maybe squats aren’t super comfortable for you, try some sit-and-stands. Sit in a chair (hopefully one without wheels) then stand, and repeat. If you want more of a challenge than the squats or the sit-and-stand. Do a sit-and-stand with one leg by sitting in the chair, elevating one of your legs then balancing your body weight on your other leg that is on the floor. Remember to switch sides and repeat. You will get more work through the glute, quad, and hamstring and activate other muscles.
Things to remember during the workday when you want to rehone your focus:
- Drink your water
- Eat every 3 hours – more if you feel foggy
- Eat proteins and veggies together
- Get some movement – walk around the halls, get out of the office, walk the stairs, etc.
If you’d like more tips and tricks, give us a call and we’d be happy to set you up with a consult. We would love to set up a custom plan for you for wherever you happen to be working out.
At Custom Fitness we offer a comprehensive approach: nutrition, body, and lifestyle modification. When we customize nutrition, we tailor it around you and your current lifestyle. When we customize exercise, we understand that your lifestyle changes day to day. We can write you a program to do here with us at the studio, we can have a different program that you can do at the office, or for when you go on your vacation in the hotel. A lot of people travel for work and family, so we have programs that can travel with you. We also can write you programs that you do at home. All of our workouts are 45 minutes or less with little to no equipment. If you want to have a plan that is going to be efficient, effective, and get you results the first time around, then come see us. If you’re interested in taking the next step to a customized lifestyle, give us a call at 806-322-3188 or e-mail us at info@customfitness.biz. At Custom Fitness, we are YOUR personal trainers in Amarillo. Have a great day.