Monday morning musing- Training productivity

In speaking with other personal trainers, many agree that a major part of this job is to act as a motivator and personal coach for the problems confronting our clients. And while I am certainly no psychologist, one thing I have learned about motivation is that these things occur in spurts.

Around the turn of the year, we experience a surge of new clients who are exercise fanatics, but by Spring time are so immersed in personal work that they cannot be bothered leaving the computer—let alone getting the gym! But by summer time, they are burned out and return to working out to regain your lost glory—only for this cycle to repeat itself again and again.

In the gym, waiting too long between sets or sticking with a particular circuit for too long creates a void which ultimately kills the workout, while unbroken conversations over ninety seconds seem to last a decade.

But while all of these things are personal observations, science tells us that the general attention span of a fully developed human is only around 10-12 minutes and continuous attention span, or the amount of time a human can focus on an object without any lapse, may be as short as 8 seconds!

With this information in mind, the question is what can we do to be most productive? The answer—at least in terms of fitness-- is improving the ability to cram as much as possible in to a set amount of time.

Known as work capacity, this is a quality we focus on heavily through interval training and timed circuits. But it is my belief this same spirit can also be applied to your daily routine through a few simple steps:

1. Write it all down- One of the biggest hassles at the beginning of a busy day is deciding what is most important. This can be alleviated by simply writing down daily tasks in order of importance. By putting immediate issues at the top of your list, you can keep less time sensitive issues in a “secondary” list which is checked off throughout the week.

2. Mark your calendar- Once you have your list, the next step is to map out your day with google calendar or other planners which list hours throughout the day. By viewing your day as a whole, you can allocate time to specific objectives between meetings and appointments. I find this aids in remaining geared to a specific project versus random multi-tasking.

3. Pencil in your workout- In this same spirit, knowing exactly how long your workout will last helps to keeps your focus on intensity. Rather than fixating on sets and reps, this is done by simply allocating periods of time to specific tasks. For example, choose three warm up stretches or strength exercises and perform 10 reps of each until the clock has hit a certain number of minutes. The goal behind this strategy is to fit work in to the same amount of time and is a great technique for fatloss and improved body composition.

4. Go beyond the gym- In daily life, this same strategy can be applied to things which normally bog us down—think cleaning, miscellaneous office work, etc. The idea is to set a timer for 5-10 minutes and do as much of this choir as you can during that time. By concentrating solely on this choir, you will gradually build tolerance and improve your “work capacity” for concentration in any task.