Good health is HARD work
Chris Desmond
Health and Wellbeing Consultant | Injury Prevention Consultant | Physiotherapist
“I've grown up in a culture of hard work gets you there”
One of my health mentoring clients told me this last week.
Their thinking was that to improve their health they needed to work hard, and then even harder.
Hard work is valuable, and there is no substitute for it.
The challenge in this situation was the definition of “hard work”
In the typical Kiwi way HARD WORK was defined as MORE WORK.
MORE time on the bike
MORE weights sessions
MORE green smoothies
It was MORE volume of healthy action.
To achieve the volume he thought was necessary was going to require prices he didn't want to pay.
LESS time with his kids
LESS time with his wife
LESS time working on (and in) his new business
LESS time on his hobbies
Indeed a conundrum.
We talked about reframing his concept of hard work. HARD didn't necessarily need to mean MORE.
I told him how I only had 17 minutes to hit the gym a few weeks ago. I wasn't there for long but I did 4000kgs of deadlifts and 2500kgs of pull ups. And then I got on with my day.
He acknowledged that was hard work.
We began to figure out ways he could work hard without it necessitating more work. How could he work hard in the time he had available?
Hill work on his mountain bike
VO2 max intervals on a stationary bike
Focusing on beautiful technique in his weight sessions
Snacking on fruit and veggies through the day
Two minutes of quiet breathing
Taking a few extra moments to hug his wife and kids
We didn't stop him doing MORE on some days.
Just showed him ways to work hard without thinking he needs to do MORE every day
Helping busy family men 40+ harness their health, increase energy and improve every aspect of their lives.
4 个月And it’s hard to resist overdoing the comforts of modern living. Holding 2 ideas at once- that life is hard AND life is a gift - has been a key insight for me.