Do you consider yourself to be poor?
I’m guessing you immediately felt judged about your financial situation and this is what lead me to write this article which is absolutely crucial if you want to look and feel epic for years to come and avoid difficulties all your life.
I was having a conversation with a client about how people often say they don’t have money whilst mentally bypassing the fact that they spend much more than they need to on houses, cars, wine, clothes, meals out and so on.
Not a judgement…just a statement of fact that has become more apparent in the ‘cost of living crisis’.
My client replied, “Yep, we all live on the breadline don’t we?!”
I drove home thinking about how true that is in so many ways, not just spending every pound or dollar you have.
Some people spend all the energy they have on things that don’t mean much to them out of some twisted sense of duty or conformity, then wonder why they don’t have energy for the things they want to do.
They also spend all their time. They pretend the day is going to go exactly as planned so they ram their diary full of stuff. Inevitably, a curveball is thrown and there’s no buffer with which to sidestep and still get things done. They have to extend the day to get everything done and collapse in an exhausted heap. They often stay up late because that time is there to be spent, sacrificing sleep.
This goes on day after day with no lessons learned.
The energy pot shrinks further so they can’t do physical activity and are ‘too tired’ to exercise (clinically proven to be more powerful than ANY drug in fighting the depression they feel). Lack of sleep also means more hunger cravings, increased negative emotions, reduced emotional stability, poor focus at work, higher anxiety levels, hormonal disruption leading to weight gain and a thousand other things…
Something has to change if you don’t want to be that person.
When we look at ‘fitness’ we see how it has become about being fat or thin and doing what looks most impressive on social media. If you’re not bothered about losing a few pounds, you might have made the grave mistake of ignoring your health or doing the minimum to get by. The true and priceless value lies in creating ‘buffer zones’ that help you survive the bad times instead of falling apart and thrive in the good ones.
You become ‘poor’ in terms of the physical resources you have available to you when required.
The problem is that RIGHT NOW you probably don’t NEED to do any better. You’re alive, you’re getting paid, you’re making it through so what’s the problem?
Well the problem is that health and fitness is like insurance. You don’t need it until you do. And when you do, it’s far too late to start making payments on your policy.
You eat what you want and work too hard. The poor food choices and stress wreaks havoc on your digestive system which in turn screws up your immune system. You then become part of the winter flu statistics and continually find yourself in some form of sickness. No buffer zone.
If you eat healthily 90-95% of the time reduce stress and sleep more, you could tolerate and fight off the bugs much more easily. You create ‘metabolic flux’ which is the ability to use fats and carbohydrates for fuel in different situations so that you don’t ‘need’ carbs all the time leading to blood sugar issues.
(Recommended Daily Intake for vitamins and minerals are usually just enough to stop you getting the associated disease such as scurvy and Vitamin C. We want you to thrive, so consume more to create your buffer zone!)
You fill your stress bucket with all manner of stresses around work, relationships, busy-ness, loans and repayments, crash dieting, excessive alcohol intake etc etc. You’re one incident away from the bucket tipping. It can’t hold any more. Anxiety hits, inexplicable physical pain becomes chronic and you’re generally on edge all the time. No buffer zone.
Your body then shuts down things not deemed essential – you lose your period, don’t produce testosterone, your immune system barely functions and you struggle to experience any kind of excitation because your nervous system is depressed. You become what I call a ‘one gear human’. Everything happens at the same slow pace because it’s the only pace your brain will let you operate at.
If you have routines and activities that help ‘empty the bucket’, you can deal with the things that blindside you. These are very individual and yours to choose and design. Some people need yoga, some people need music, some people need comedy, some people need boxing…
You have a weak heart and high blood pressure from not doing any cardio. Everything becomes an effort and you go from 0-60mph in any activity making you even less inclined to do exercise. If you force yourself to do something hard, your cardiovascular system comes under extreme stress and if you’re really unlucky, you suffer a heart attack. No buffer zone.
If you do aerobic exercise 3x a week, you become able to keep your heart rate lower at increasing levels of difficulty. You increase the ability of your cells to create energy from the same nutrients. Life’s more enjoyable and you don’t die earlier than necessary.
Your breathing is shallow. Just enough to keep you conscious. You can’t run, cycle or use stairs with ease because you can’t deal with the increased oxygen demands. No buffer zone.
If you learn to nasal breathe and breathe deeply, you oxygenate your brain and body. Both work better during increasingly tougher tasks so life can be much more fulfilling and you can deal with stressful physical situations whether chosen or forced upon you.
You never do strength training. You body is strong enough to deal with what you challenge it with – sitting at a desk, walking to the car and tapping on your phone. When you try to lift heavy bags or do the gardening, your body breaks. No buffer zone.
If you could deadlift 1-1.5x your body weight, day-to-day activities become easy and enjoyable. You become a more useful human to other people as well!
Your joint mobility is poor. Your sphere of safe activity steadily shrinks increasing your risk of falls and injury when an abnormal range of motion or movement is forced upon you in life or sport. Your activity choices become more limited. No buffer zone.
If you stretch and mobilise, you increase your sphere of safe activity which is fun and creates life opportunities. We don’t lose movement as we get older – we get older because we stop moving…
Your muscle mass is too low or just enough. This reduces your metabolic rate and strength. When you want to lose fat or look better, you have little room for manoeuvre in creating a true transformation. No buffer zone.
If you lift weights (in an educated manner, following a good program) and eat enough protein to create an anabolic (muscle building) state, you improve your body shape, increase your base metabolic rate, increase your insulin sensitivity and will look and feel awesome!
‘Buffer zones’ give you more confidence so you can live a much more exciting life and not feel like you’re always coming up against roadblocks.
Strength training, cardio, nutrition, gym classes….they’re not just about losing fat if you feel a bit fluffy.
They help create these buffer zones in so many areas of your mental and physical wellbeing that you become more resilient, harder to kill and better able to do all the things you love to do in life…even as you get into middle age and beyond!
Athletes should take note as well and not just focus on what they like doing.
A big Zone 2 from lots of base aerobic work enables you to increase your aerobic power, the level at which you can work whilst burning fat for fuel. This helps preservation of carbohydrates during your training and competitions. Build the buffer zone!
Instead of just training as hard as you can, know your thresholds. Train to increase your two breathing thresholds which largely equate to the top of Zone 2 and the top of Zone 4 where lactic acid build up becomes too much and you have to slow down. Build the buffer zone!
Don’t just ‘do enough’. Be stronger than your sport demands. Be able to go for longer than required.
If you’re capable of generating Level 10 strength and cardio outputs, when you’re called upon to generate Level 6 and 7, you will feel infinitely more comfortable doing so than those around you. Level 6 and 7 will kill them off and you’ll come into your own as the standout performer in the later stages.
Train hard and smart, fight easy!
Don’t let poor conditioning limit mental acuity. The higher your heart goes and the faster you breathe, the harder it becomes to focus. Be the fittest in the arena so you can also be the smartest when the going gets tough.
Play an interval based sport? Do more Zone 2 so that you recover faster and can repeat your awesomeness over and over again instead of watching your power or speed drop off.
Whoever you are and whatever your fitness ‘status’, stop living on the breadline and having no resources to work with when you need them!
You may well get away with it for now but sooner or later you won’t be able to deal with changes in your environment like a new virus, demands for your time, immediate physical threat or fitness challenges you don’t want to miss out on!
Build the Buffer Zones and be an around useful and inspired human!
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Choose one that helps you build the buffer zone you know you need to work on most!
