Welcome to the positive corner of wellness. Here’s a daily digest designed to make you healthier in less than 5 minutes. If you were forwarded this message, you can get the free daily email here.
Today’s Health Upgrade
Arnold's Monday Mindset
The Cooldown Mistake
Workout of the Week
Monday Mindset
I almost always talk to you about different ways to add positivity to your life. We’ve worked on building routines, reaching out to friends and family, and creating our vision. (Speaking of vision, how did that weekend challenge go for all of you? Did you make a movie in your head? Tell me on Twitter.)
I love hearing from all of you about how being a part of this village adds to your life and how it’s a positive corner of the internet, which many of you tell me can be very negative. So this week, we are going to work on subtracting. We’re going to delete some negativity from our lives.
No matter what, we are all going to have moments when we get angry. A lot of those times we can’t avoid — none of us can get out of being stuck in traffic. But there are places where we have the choice to add anger into our lives, so that’s what we will focus on this week.
I’ve told you that I have a rule when watching the news. If I get mad, I ask myself, “Can I do anything about this?” And if the answer is yes, like when hospitals didn’t have PPE or veterans didn’t have housing, then I do something. If the answer is no, which is often the case, then I try to turn off my anger. It’s a waste.
But what if I told you we can stop negativity before it starts? I’ve found that I have a lot less negativity in my life by not watching certain shows or checking certain websites for news. They make money from my anger. They weren’t trying to inform me; they were trying to get me fired up.
As you go through this week, I want you to do something simple. Look for those moments when you are scrolling social media or watching the news, and you feel yourself getting angry. Right now, I want you to notice it and write down what you were watching or what social media account made your face get hot or your hair stand up. I think that just realizing you’re getting angry will make you less negative.
I bet you can guess what the weekend challenge will be. But until then, I want you to pay attention and write down all the sources of negativity you find.
Here’s to a more positive week.
Stay Cool During Hot Workouts
When your workouts heat up, learning to cool down is an important part of recovery and reducing risk. But a common technique to chill out might be tricking your body into doing the opposite of what you want.
Putting a cold towel on the back of your neck when you’re hot could slow down your body’s ability to cool off.
According to a recent episode of Science Quickly, your brain helps regulate your body’s temperate. And the receptors for heating and cooling are located near the back of your neck. So when you put cold on your neck, it can trick your brain into thinking you are cooler than you are, which means your brain will shut off your body’s other chill-out mechanism and keep you dangerously hot.
Instead, two easy ways could help cool down your body more effectively.
1) Drink cold water, but not too fast. This one is the most obvious but shouldn’t be understated. However, too much too fast could confuse your body’s natural signals. So sip on the cold water. If you want to know how much to drink, use the Galpin Equation by our friend Andy Galpin. Take your body weight in pounds, divide it by 30, and that is the ounces of water you should drink every 15 minutes of hard exercise. So if you’re 180 pounds, you’d want to drink approximately 6 ounces of water (180/30) every 15 minutes.
2) Run cool water on the palms of your hand or the soles of your feet. These might seem odd, but these areas (AKA “non-hairy skin”) have special blood vessels that help you cool down quicker. But there’s no need for the water to be freezing. Cool water will do the trick.
Train hard, be safe, and stay cool.
Workout of the Week
Results are not dependent on the duration of your workout; they rely upon your consistent, sustainable effort and intensity. That’s why this workout by coach and fitness writer Andrew Coates is designed to get you working harder without needing too much time to train. This approach works because it forces you to increase your intensity. And not taking up too much time makes it easier for you to consistently train two or three times per week, which will help you see the results you want.
Coach Coates created two variations, one that uses gym equipment and one you can do at home. Give them a try, and you’ll be surprised by the effectiveness of these shorter plans.
The Gym Workout
Complete two sets of both of the supersets below. Perform the first exercise, rest as little as possible, and perform the second. Rest for the listed time, and then repeat the same two exercises. Rest again, and then move to the second set of exercises. Repeat the same process, and then you’re done!
Superset #1
1A) Rear-Foot Elevated Split Squat: 5-6 reps per leg
1B) Supported Single Leg Romanian Deadlift: 6-8 reps per leg
Rest 90 to 120 seconds rest between supersets
Superset #2
2A) Half Kneeling Landmine Press: 10-12 reps per side
2B) Landmine Meadows Row: 8-10 reps per side
Rest 90 to 120 seconds rest between supersets
The At-Home Workout
Complete two sets of both of the supersets below. Perform the first exercise, rest as little as possible, and perform the second. Rest for the listed time, and then repeat the same two exercises. Rest again, and then move to the second set of exercises. Repeat the same process, and then you’re done!
Superset #1
1A) Bodyweight Split Squat: 5-10 reps per leg
1B) Single Leg Hip Thrust: 5-8 reps per leg
Rests 90 to 120 seconds between supersets
Superset #2
2A) Pushup or Incline Pushup: 5-12 reps
2B) Back Plank (instead of chest facing the floor, chest facing up towards the ceiling): hold until near failure
Rest 90 to 120 seconds rest between supersets
That's it, and that's all. Give it a try, and let us know what you think!
