Performance & Productivity, Personal Development

Thirteen Jacked Up Things That Are Pissing Away Your Life

This morning I was thinking about my constant effort to improve my productivity and energy management. The world is fighting against people that want to be productive, smart, efficient and ambitious. You have to always be on your toes and proactively plan your life so life doesn't take control of you. This post (like so many others) was written partially as a reminder to myself about the bad habits of the past that have killed my goals in life. I hope it opens your eyes and helps guide you towards the light of happiness.
 

TV is putting stupid things into your head.

Two of the worst types of content that are available on TV are the news and reality shows. Both are entertainment masked as reality. We often forget that, so we start using the content generated by those two categories as reality. TV news allows anybody that is entertaining to get on the air and say whatever they want and have it been presented as facts. And being wrong about your local and world events is worse than being ignorant. If you are ignorant you can say "I don't know". If you are wrong, you'll spread the wrong information to several more people before a mistake is discovered. Reality TV shows makes stupid people famous. And then they make our kids want to be like these stupid people.

Solution for both …

Ingest less random TV. Plan your shows. And know what you are watching. Seek out quality and educational shows. Just because something on news station does not mean it is news. It is often more entertainment than news.
 

Facebook is putting stupid things into your head.

 Combine the ability for anybody to put up a website that can say anything (i.e. Fake news sites) and the awesome feature for information to spread like wildfire (social media), and you have the perfect storm to spread FUD (Fear, uncertainty and doubt). I've noticed a disturbing trend from my friends on social media. They are sharing information that they received via social media from websites that look like news. I am not referring to great sites like "The Onion" which is the king of all websites and does not pretend to be real. I am referring to the countless other sites which present a non-stop stream of conspiracy theories. It seems that we would rather believe something that sounds outrageous and far-fetched than the truth. I believe these sites are hurting our ability to stay objectively informed about topics that matter. Solution: Before you share news that sounds outrageous, please start performing due diligence and ensure that the story has some basis in fact. If not, please don't share it.



Time Lost Cannot Be Regained


You are comparing your life to mine, to your neighbors, and the to the multi-millionaire whose book you read.

It is important to remember that all of us are on separate journeys. You wake up in the morning with a completely different set of goals and values than I wake up with. You don't know my dark struggles and I don't know yours. So, when you have an amazing amount of success, I should not be judging my life against yours. You likely worked hard and deserve every bit of it. Rather than being jealous I need to focus on my hustle, so I get closer to my goals and dream. I've written about this before in "Vanity and Jealousy are not part of the Success Equation".

You are eating crap pretending it is food.

Just like the television is putting crap into your head, we are putting crap into our mouths. Start being more aware of what you are eating and what it contains. Example: You've heard that chicken is good for you, but this is highly dependent on the way it is prepared. You've been hearing it since you were a kid and I'll emphasize it again here: It is hard to go wrong eating too many fruits and vegetables. I've spent a lot of time in elementary schools and the kids there are getting crap fed to them also. What goes into our mouths directly affects our moods and our energy levels. You should not let anything questionable past your teeth.

If you want to get a good idea of how the food you are eating is affecting your body, start using the MyFitnessPal website and mobile app. I've started using this recently to track my food intake and it has given me some great insight about the number of and types of calories that I am ingesting.
 

You refuse to exercise.

Thanks to technology we have a world filled with more information workers than ever before in history. Entire corporations are filled with people that are glued to a computer screen 12 hours a day. The lack of movement is killing our short-term and long-term health. If you don't want to be hobbling around just waiting to die when you are 50, then make regular exercise a part of your weekly routine. Don't over complicate it. Most of the basic exercise that we have learned since we were kids will work. But anything counts. If you do nothing right now, then get up and go walk 1/2 mile away from your house and 1/2 mile back.

If you are working in a building that allows breaks, go outside and walk around the building a couple of times. Please take your physical health seriously. It is not something that you can get to "someday".

You are spending time judging other people's bedrooms.

Stop being so concerned with what other people are doing behind closed doors. What I do with whom and when does not affect your life. You have a good time in your bedroom, and I'll have a good time in mine.

You love playing politics.

I am sure that politics used to be a noble profession. But it has lost its value. Most of the time if I am a Democrat and you are a Republican, you instantly must hate me. You instantly assume everything about me because you've been told on TV or on the internet what a horrible person I am because of my party. Politicians also spend a lot of time fighting to be "in control". Let's start working more as individuals with a common goal to better our country and our community. No two people in the same party believe the same way about everything. We really should be allowed to register as Independent without being penalized. We are independent people with independent thoughts on the topics that affect us. Stop fighting just to fight.

You are all talk and zero action.

This is the entire reason I started StopDoingNothing so I won't go into this one too deeply. Every blog post on the site deals with this topic. Remember that a poorly executed plan that has started is better than the perfect plan on paper waiting to start.

Even Elvis knew this

You spend too much time on Buzzfeed and related sites.

This is somewhat related to the post above about wasting time on the internet. Pay close attention to where you spend your time online. All websites are doing their best to keep you on their site for as long as possible. The longer you stay on a website the more of a chance you will buy something. So please think twice before clicking over to the next article you see about "20 Things That 80s Kids Will Totally Get" or before taking that next quiz to see what kind of dog that you would be. That article will likely contribute nothing to your education or goals, but it will eat into the time you spend working on your aspirations.

You believe that the weekend was created for you to do nothing.

Most of us have grown up in a "Monday to Friday 40-hour work week" kind of world. We've been conditioned to believe that Saturday and Sunday are days that we should relax so we can be ready to repeat the pattern of insanity on Monday morning. A better way of looking at your week is that you have 168 hours to accomplish whatever your soul desires. If you have to be strapped to a desk during the week while you work on your dream, then take advantage of weekends to get ahead. Start waking up early on the weekend. Treat them like any other productive day. People that are successful don't care about when something gets done. They treat everything as urgent and take advantage of all available time to make their dreams happen.
Start hustling more on the weekends.

You talk bad about other people.

Spend less time complaining about other people and more time looking in the mirror. Nobody is perfect. We don't have the right to judge our neighbors just because we sin differently than they do. If all of us focused on improving our own lives more we would not have time for caring what our friends are doing, how they are doing it or who they are doing it with.

You don't read enough.

See my note above about watching TV. You rarely gain a lot of knowledge from the TV because it is primarily designed to sell advertising. However, books allow you to focus on a single topic uninterrupted. When you are learning from a book it is not going to pause for a 30 second commercial. There is not going to be a book that pops up over the book telling you about the next book that is coming up. All the smart people that I know are always reading. Go find your closest library and start spending more time there looking for the books that have knowledge you wish to acquire.

You are not in the moments of your life.

We are addicted to our technology, and it is killing our face-to-face relationships. When you pick up a phone while you are sitting face-to-face with somebody, you are saying that what is on that screen is more important than the person in front of you. There are no emergencies in our phone. Unless you get a call from a relative or your kid's school about something, every email, phone call and text can wait until the meeting is over. Before we had phones in our pocket, we would get calls on our home phones. If we weren't there, the person on the other end would leave a message or call back later. That is how you should treat your cell phone. Take advantage of your voicemail and let most call go there. Cell phone calls and text kill productivity. And doubly so if you are having a meeting with someone. Start being 100% in the moment that you are in and put your technology aside.


Share this list with your friends on social media and challenge them to fight this list.

~ Patrick
(@patrickallmond on Twitter)

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Generating Wealth

How I Went From $0 To $17K/Month In 12 Months

This article is reprinted in full with permission from the original author Colin. I kept all images and links intact. I originally read this over on Reddit and thought it was a great example of how to build an internet business strictly based on great content and low-cost advertising. Note that this is not a "How To Make Money Fast" post. Colin busted his chops for 12 months to get his "overnight success". Read, learn, take notes and please help us and Colin out by sharing this all-over social media.

~ Patrick

---

What’s up everybody?

My name is Colin, and I am the founder Bullymake.com. My background is in Finance and Economics – although internet marketing is now my passion.

One year ago, I decided to start my company, Bullymake. When I started, I had no clue what I was doing.

That means I had ZERO marketing experience, ZERO web experience, just ZERO experience as an entrepreneur.

But I knew I wanted to build a business, and I wasn’t going to stop just because I didn’t know how to do something.

First, I taught myself how to build a website.

Then I taught myself how to acquire customers on a consistent basis.

I acquired my first customer in September of 2014 and was giddy like a little school girl. Then I learned how to get better and better at it.

And let it be stated that this company was COMPLETELY BOOTSTRAPPED. I didn’t have any money to risk when I started building it. I had no money to invest (at least, not a significant amount at all - like a couple hundred bucks.)

So, let’s jump into what’s worked and how I went from scrub to building a $17K monthly recurring revenue business (and growing quickly month over month)!


1. Picking a huge market and focusing on a specific problem.

Bullymake first started when my wife and I bought a little Bulldog. Originally, it started as a business where I wanted to sell collars, harnesses, and other items for the Bulldog breed.

From there, I pivoted. I then realized he was destroying every toy in site, and that toys would be a good idea!

As I learned more about internet marketing, I realized that continuity (monthly recurring) businesses are really sweet. The lifetime value of a customer can be super high if the customer is happy.

So, I set my focus on a subscription box – and not just for Bulldogs, but for all power chewing breeds!

Problem was that a subscription box business for dogs is not a new concept. In fact, there is competition EVERYWHERE. But this can be a good thing – it means the market is huge.

But by creating a company slightly differently from the rest and focusing on a specific problem, I can tap into a massive market. This is where the inherent value for Bullymake is!

Take what your competition is doing and either A) slightly differentiate yourself or B) do it better… Or both. No need to reinvent the wheel.


2. CONTENT MARKETING

Yes, I put that shit in all caps 'cause it's important.

Content marketing literally built this business and now we’re gonna talk about how to do this from here on out.

The pieces of content you develop are the TOP OF ANY SALES FUNNEL.

This is where I initially found my first trickles of traffic. I wrote blog posts.

I started by writing “evergreen” type posts looking for traffic from the search engines. Noob moves for my niche.

Those posts are boring, unoriginal, and have no chance for virality.

Posts such as: “Why a Harness is Important for Your Dog.” FUCKING YAWN.

I then started writing posts that connected with people and their interest. Such as “21 Things Only a Bulldog Parent Would Understand” that utilized a lot of imagery from Instagram. Boom!

These posts are a hit and get shared like crazy – bringing me lots of traffic.

They get shared over and over by readers, and it exposes my brand to a larger and larger audience.

If you make a quality post and target correctly, a little bit of money on Facebook can go a long way. And I mean a loooooonggg way.

As you can see above, I had only spent ~ $50 to market that post. I got 1,135 clicks from that post at $.044 cents per click. That’s less than 1 cent per click.

Check the other metrics – an 8.46% CTR, and a 10/10 relevance score.

And that doesn’t include the organic traffic from the shares.

This piece of content would be the top of my sales funnel. It’s where people first come to your site and familiarize with your brand.

And once that happens you move on to RETARGETING these people.


3. Custom Audiences & Retargeting

And that brings us here. Custom audiences are the SHIT. They do everything for you.

Whenever you make a blog post, immediately make sure you build a custom audience for any traffic that hits that page.

A custom audience is simply an audience of people that have visited a specific page on your site, or any page on your site.

Facebook puts these people into this audience for you to retarget later. We have hundreds and hundreds of custom audiences.

This is a very basic step for building an effective Facebook sales funnel.


Then write another blog post which targets the traffic that’s already been to your site! Guess what the results are?


That’s right. Lots of organic reach which means tons of shares, traffic, and leads. It’s because they already know you and your brand. Now you’re starting to build authority and trust with these people.

And for those individuals who have already reached one of the product pages, they get re-targeted much more aggressively within Facebook and other social sites.

I build ads that remind them to just straight up buy our Bullymake Boxes.

These ads are effective because we target the users (and this is the KEY) who have already been to the product pages and looked at the actual product we sell. Therefore, they are much more likely to buy.

One thing I constantly see is so many people who just build a BMS ad, throw a bunch of money on Facebook, and wonder why nobody converted.

A BMS ad is a “Buy My Shit” ad. It’s not good and it doesn’t work on Facebook in particular, ESPECIALLY when targeting cold traffic.

You’ll be so ROI negative and out of business so quick. Don’t do that. Warm your audience up with engaging content first.


4. Email Marketing

Now, with all this traffic we’re driving from our social media properties, it’s important to realize that the majority of them are going to bounce (aka leave your website).

However, what’s absolutely imperative is that your pages include an e-mail capture popup.

Yes, popups are the devil. But yes, they are necessary.

By doing this, I’m able to capture 30-150 emails a day depending on my advertising spend. The image below is from yesterday.

On my best days I’ll capture 150 e-mails +. But it really depends on the amount of traffic that rolls through - which depends on my ad spend (usually).

Sometimes I'll be spending $20/day on a piece of content, and a super influencer will share it and I'll get a HUGE surge in traffic.

What’s more? I target SPECIFIC dog breeds through the content I’ve made.

If you’re on a post about Great Danes,
you’ll see this popup:

Reading content about American Bulldogs?
You’ll see this popup:

And this has led to pretty solid email conversions. Considering we average about 3K unique visits per day, you can see how our e-mail list builds quickly.


5. Nurture your E-mail Leads

Now, once people are on your e-mail list you should never just sell to them.

What you want to do is send them… You guessed it. Relevant and engaging content.

This allows for your e-mail list to get more of a feel for your brand and consume your content. It will also boost your open and click through rates in your e-mails so that when you do sell, people actually open the message!

A sales blast every once in a while, isn’t a bad idea. I do it once a week to my list. But if you do it too much, you’ll kill your list and lose leads.


6. Calls To Action Placed In Blog Posts

Sometimes (actually, lots of times) people end up coming to the content I’ve created, seeing the ad I’ve placed at the bottom of a blog post, and converting from there.

You should be placing calls-to-action in your blog posts to make your visitors do what you want them to do!

For example, I’ve been dropping this at the bottom of every single blog post:

It gets people curious after they’ve read our content, and they start clicking around to the homepage and beyond.

Another trick you can do is put an e-mail opt-in inside of your content that basically expands your content for their e-mail address. I don’t do this, but many of the best marketers do.


Where Bullymake Is Going

There are still things we are improving on.

Logistically, order fulfillment is an absolute pain. We are using software but it’s still not easy. We are placing more time and money in our fulfillment process to improve this area.

Our box branding is also getting upgraded into a more branded experience. That’s being implemented this month. Prior to this, we have slapped a label on a box and called it good. Goes to show that a pretty box isn’t crucial for sales, but it does help.

Higher ad spend and scale – it’s taken close to a year to nail our funnel down. We are going to be scaling our ad spend up and bringing in even more sales.


I hope this helped … Or inspired!

If there is interest, I’d like to write about my Pinterest funnel, Twitter Funnel, and Instagram efforts in the future. I’ll also dive deeper into e-mail marketing and SEO.

Keep in mind though that I’ve built this business ENTIRELY through utilizing paid traffic. SEO is important, but it’s not critical if your funnel is built nicely and you’re seeing a positive ROI.

I will be posting regularly over at www.hatzmarketing.com to update our progress on Bullymake, our clients’ businesses, and overall growth and marketing strategies.


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Business Mastery, Performance & Productivity, Personal Development

Video: You Are Where You Are Because Of Your Rituals

If you want to model successful people, the first thing you should be looking at are their rituals. Look at every detail including such minor things as:

  • What do they do every morning when their feet hit the ground?
  • How often do they read?
  • How often do they check email?
  • How much time do they spend exercising?
  • How much time do they spend marketing their business?
  • Who do they socialize with during their downtime?


Take 15 minutes and watch the video on this page. It will change your life if you let it.

The amazing part about massive success to me is that people are trying to hard when it is one of the easiest things that is attainable.

Watch people that have succeeded before you and copy them.


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Performance & Productivity, Personal Development

The Average Saturday vs. The Kickass Saturday

Welcome to Saturday morning.

It is time to wake up and be average. Because that that is what most people will do. They'll relish the fact that they can sleep in because their POS job makes them get up at the same time every week. They get up, turn on the TV, make coffee, and land on the couch. They'll do everything they can do to avoid any working or learning. And around noon they'll start hooking up with their friends to see where they are going to get drunk tonight.

This can be you. Or you can opt for the kickass Saturday.

You can get up and be a high achiever. You can wake up earlier than you do the rest of the week because this ENTIRE day is yours to create. You can drink 32oz of water right away and stay standing up because doing both will wake you faster than the strongest cup of coffee out there. You can look around your house and start arranging things in ways that facilitate success. You can spend time learning something new online that will help you start that hobby or business that you wanted. You can go down to the local gym, get a tour, join, and put GYM VISIT on your scheduled at a 3 day/week appointment that you will not miss. You can go through your cupboards and throw out all of the crap that is unhealthy. You can start getting rid of a ton of stuff around the house you don't use and take it to Goodwill so somebody else can benefit. And you can call a friend or two that has kickass life you want to have and take them to dinner and pick their brain.

You can make this day kickass or you can be average.

You'll never get the chance back. You can try to do it next Saturday but odds are if you blow it off now you'll blow it off then too.

Don't waste it.


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Attitude Adjustment

10 Happy Things To Think About When You Open Your Eyes

The first one to five minutes after you wake up and open your eyes can frame your entire day. There are two thoughts that you have for every action. The first one is the decision whether or not to do a 'thing' that you know we have to get done. But the second often overlooked thought process is your attitude about the 'the thing' that must get done. 

The attitude about getting something done can make the task miserable or joyful.

But to control that you must always be working on the conscious attitudes about what you are getting ready to do. The most important time that you need control your attitudes (or "meta thoughts") are when you open your eyes in the morning. Here are some suggested thoughts for when you open your eyes each day. 

  1. "Holy cow. I'm alive for another day."

  2. "There is a roof over my head. I am very grateful for that."

  3. "Somebody else in the world loves me enough to want to share my bed with me. Oh cool. Look at that. She/He is right there. "

  4. "I need to get this body hydrated and moving. If I don't take care of it, it will fall apart on me. A well-maintained pain-free body will allow me to accomplish my dreams and goals faster."

  5. "Am I up early? Time to get a jump on the competition. Those suckers are still in bed. (Unless they are reading the same blog post I read on StopDoingNothing.com about morning thoughts)"

  6. "I am thankful that I have a smart kid who is not in jail or addicted to any substance."

  7. "How can I use my time today to improve the life of the other people in this house?"

  8. "How can I best use my time today to improve the life of another person outside of this house?"

  9. "Who can I learn from today who knows more than me and can boost my intelligence?"

  10. "Do not get involved in petty arguments on or offline. They zap energy, make me defensive, are rarely productive, and they take time away from living my dreams."

I'd love to hear what you think about when you wake up. 

Please share your thoughts in the comments below. 


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Performance & Productivity, Personal Development

Three Immutable Laws Of Discipline That Smart People Live By

Plan everything or it will never happen.

Manage your time as recurring daily, weekly and monthly appointments on your calendar. Most of your calendar should be recurring blocks of time that have you making consistent progress towards your highest priorities. Don't forget to add in regular blocks for relaxation time, screw around time, family time, etc. These are important parts of our lives that we cannot afford to let happen by chance. 

Live and die by your plan.

Once you choose to live by #1, don't mess around with your schedule. If your Wednesday says you are exercising from 6-8, don't "get to it at 7". At 6pm you drop whatever you are doing and exercise. You said it was important. You allocated the time. Now go do it. As you learn more about yourself and your priorities, your allocation of time may change. If that happens modify the block of time to better suit your life or remove it. Don't leave it on your calendar and keep skipping it thinking you'll get to it someday. This is called discipline. Not "Something kind of like discipline".

Don't wander aimlessly.

Limit the amount of time you spend randomly browsing the internet. Stay off social networking, news sites, etc. unless they are DIRECTLY related to you researching or working on your dreams. Every website today is designed to keep you there for as long as possible - doubly so for social media sites. Almost nobody gets on Facebook for just "five minutes". Five minutes will rapidly turn into an hour. If you feel you need time to screw around on the internet, go see #1 and put it on your calendar. If it gets out of hand, then read the bonus tip. 

Bonus Discipline Tip:

Spending time in front of the computer is a great way to burn away unproductive hours of your life. If you know you are the type of person that has this problem, consider installing RescueTime. I have this running all the time. It tracks all the websites and programs that I use to show me how productive I am. Once you have it installed for a week you will get some amazing data that will probably surprise you about yourself and your habits. Use that information to improve how you manage time online. RescueTime is a must have app if you are having online discipline issues. Get it! 

Was this good? Did you see our other article about this?

Click here to read one of our most popular past posts on Fixed Schedule Productivity.


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Performance & Productivity, Personal Development

Do You Get Easily Distracted As Your Work On Your Goals? (Print This)

The path towards success can be boring. Once you get intently focused on doing something, you start ignoring a lot of the distractions around you. You become less interested in things that waste your time and your energy. Friends might call you on a whim to go do something fun and you'll end up turning them down because that time was already planned. You have a workout planned. Or you are going to be finishing up the last chapter of your book. Or you were going to be spending quality time with your family. 

During those times it helps to remember this list:

  • Remember your dream. 
  • Remember what kind of physical shape you have to be in to get there. 
  • Remember what kind of friends you are going to need to get there. 
  • Remember what kind of financials you are going to need to get there. 
  • Remember the books you are going to have to read to get there. 

Focus on these and eliminate anything activity in your life that is not in line with this list. Let others plop themselves in front of the TV. Let everybody go out and get drunk. It may seem like your life is boring. But boring is another word for someone who is damned focused and won't let anything get in his/her way. 

Get focused.


Print this (or something like this) and tape it to your bathroom mirror, your refrigerator, your monitor, and your nightstand.


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Leadership Lessons, Performance & Productivity, Personal Development

Five Reasons You Need To Kill Your Plan B In Life RIGHT NOW!

I've always been a huge fan of SUCCESS magazine and of the founder Darren Hardy. One of my goals has been to write more and submit my articles to national magazines. This past week I was doubly-blessed by getting an article under the "Editor's Choice" column of SUCCESS Magazine. It has made the rounds quite a bit on social media, and I have to admit I am pretty stoked. I'd like to give a huge high five to those of you that have helped me out with the shares.

The article starts ...

"From an early age, our parents taught us we need other options available in case our wishes don’t work out the way we wanted. When we go to an amusement park, we pick a list of rides to visit because we might not always get our first choice. At Christmas we are told to pick a list of presents because our first option is not always available. We are supposed to have backup options because we may not get our initial choice in life."

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE.


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Staying Healthy

I Hate Running. But I Love The Feeling Afterwards.

I don't understand people that get that runner's high. It's never happened to me. On my best days with my best times, I still can't wait until I'm done with the entire course. That is exactly how I felt when I made this quick video after running recently. I hate running. But I still encourage people to do it because there is no better test of health than how your body reacts right after a run. Check it out. 

(Be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel after watching. You don't want to miss another chance to see me out of breath and sweaty).

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Performance & Productivity, Personal Development, Staying Healthy

The Simplest Success Tip You’ll Ever Read

We love to overcomplicate success sometimes. But one of the most successful habits that has helped me over the years is so simple that people can't believe it possibly works. 

It comes down to one word: Movement.

Successful people don't sit around much. They are always moving or standing or generating motion in some way. Movement has the magical quality of generating more movement and more energy. Whenever you sit down everything in your body wants to relax. Body parts want to fall asleep. When you stand and work your body has no choice but to pump more blood throughout your system to keep you upright. Sitting has always made me more sluggish - especially when I am already tired. But once I stand (like I am right now) my brain starts to go into overdrive with ideas. I've even learned that I can get a great Facebook or blog post out faster when I am standing. Whenever I visit spaces where people have to be highly creative, I'm seeing standing desks all over the place. And let's not even get into the extra calories that you are burning when you are standing and generating even the smallest amount of movement. 

Want more energy? 

More ideas? 

More momentum? 

More action? 

Try standing instead of sitting. 

You'll be happily surprised with the results.


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Personal Development, Staying Healthy

My Incredibly Simple Gym Workout That Is Kicking My Butt

About nine months ago I posted a blog post about my obsession with lifting weights. Click here to read it. That addiction has not gone away, and I'm still at the gym every Monday, Wednesday and Friday doing my best to improve my body by lifting things up and putting them down. 

If you were a hardcore professional competing bodybuilder, you would split up your workouts by body part. However, I am not planning to compete, so I do my best to get a full body workout in during a single gym visit. Since I get bored easily, I am constantly trying new and different exercises to challenge my body. I am also working hard to get my arms, shoulders and back in shape so I can easily manage the upcoming Conquer The Gauntlet four mile obstacle course that I will be running on June 21st. 

Here is the simple routine that I am doing every visit to the gym. It gives me a full body workout in less than sixty minutes. I run through this set of exercises four or five times with a very small rest period in between: 

  • Back Squats x 10 - Put a bar on your shoulders and squat down - simple stuff. I use an Olympic bar (the big one - 45lbs + weights) but any bar will work. The goal is to get the upper part of your thighs to be parallel with the floor. You may have to work down to that. If you lose your balance and want to fall forward, be sure that you are focusing on pushing down and up with the heel of your foot vs. the toes. What does it work? Upper Legs, Butt, Calves.

  • Bench Press x 10 - Lay on the bench press ... bench. Grab the bar with your hands slightly greater than shoulder width. Start with your arms straight out in front of you and bring the bar down to your nipples. Make sure you touch your chest with the bar. I see many people only do this 1/2 way. What does it work? Chest, back, arms.

  • Bent Over Back Row x 10 - Stand up and grab a bar at slightly greater than shoulder width. Bend over at the waist so your upper body is perpendicular to your lower body. With the bar hanging down by the floor, pull it up with your back muscles and touch your nipples. This is like a reverse bench press. What does it work? Upper Back, Arms.

  • Overhead Press x 10 - You guessed it. Grab a bar at a width slightly greater than your shoulders. Lift it up and rest it right below your chin. Then press it overhead until your arms are fully extended. Bring the bar back down to your chin. What does it work? Shoulders, Arms, Upper Back.

The x10 means perform the repetition 10 times. Use weights that make the exercises challenging, but not impossible. If you are reading this blog, you are probably not working out to compete for any records. (But if you are let me know. That would make me feel like a badass if a competitive bodybuilder or weightlifter was reading this website.)

That is it! It is simple, it works your major body parts, and if done right you will feel exhausted when you have completed five sets. 

Note:

This routine does not account for any aerobic activity that you need. But if you limit the rest time between sets, the high repetition count will keep your heart rate high.

Disclaimer:

I am not a fitness instructor in any way shape or form. If you are new to exercise, please start slow and work your way into more advanced routines. If you have any questions or concern about exercise, please consult a licensed physician or a personal trainer. 

Even after the disclaimer - this routine is still giving me one hell of a workout. If you follow it, you will burn some serious calories and gain strength. 

If you want to read my other posts on workouts, click here

Your friend in success,

Patrick Allmond   


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