Run or Walk?

The age old question of go for a run or walk? Which is better? Why? I just read a great article here They make many good points but i'll give you my opinion, which is obviously more important...

 

vs

 

The real question comes down to what you are trying to accomplish. If you haven't exercised for the past 6 months or are just trying to break an unhealthy cycle, going for a 30 minute walk 3 days a week can do wonders for your health. But what you need to do is keep the body guessing. After doing the same workout routine for about 5 weeks your body will adjust and that workout will no longer be as helpful. So once you have been steadily walking for several weeks, turn one of those 30 minute sessions into half jog half walk. A couple weeks later, add some 50 yard sprints into your jog. Its all about the small incremental changes.

The main point is that any exercise is good! But be sure not to get locked into the same routine of walking or jogging. For me I go jogging only 2 or 3 times a week, and other days I workout by playing pickup basketball or frisbee or soccer. Or in the words of the lovable character Gordon from dodgeball:

"I'm gonna shock the biceps later, then some cardio. Keep the body guessing."

Top healthy companies: what makes them great and what you can learn from them

I just read a great article on the top 44 healthiest companies to work for. Here are few of my takeaways:

It should come as no surprise that all of these companies are making the health and wellness of their employees their number one priority. This is a growing trend in America. But the question is in how do they do it? Most of them offer on site fitness centers, gyms or yoga studios. They offer things such as rock climbing walls, healthy snacks, meditation rooms, online health coaches and some even offer on site pools and bike paths. They have taken their large locations and turned them into healthifying places to work!

Scrolling through the top companies we see names like Google, GE, Accenture, Nike and Progressive Insurance. All VERY VERY large successful companies. These companies have the balance sheets and employees needed to fund corporate wellness offices and staff them to take care of their employees. But what do you do if you are smaller company without these resources?

The smaller companies on this list are searching for ways to outsource these same great perks. EventBrite provides their employees with a monthly fitness and wellness stipend. StumbleUpon reimburses their employees for gym memberships. Tumblr's employees get free gym memberships. Skillshare subsidizes gym and yoga fees...you get the point here. They are paying for their employees health but they are not managing it and bringing it on site like the larger companies. These large companies have found the benefits of having control over the entire wellness of their employees.

Enter...

THIS IS WHY HEALTHIFY MY TEAM  EXISTS!
We help these smaller companies bring yoga and other fitness sessions directly to your work, just like the larger companies do. We manage the entire process for these companies so they do not have to worry about anything. We help them create the healthy culture and team bonding they are looking for.

What is the best time of the day to swim?

When posed the question when is the best to swim to maximize the healthifying effects, the college swimmer in me immediately responds with "anytime you're not doing something else!" But that is based off of 15 years of two a day practices and four hours a day spent in the pool. That is also not normal...it's actually very abnormal...So for normal people the question really is do I work out before work or after work. An article from Speedo Magazine puts a new spin on it saying you should work out in the very early morning, and before breakfast. Having swam in the very early morning I can say for a fact it helps you wake up for the day and you will feel more accomplished.

Speedo also claims swimming on an empty stomach will help you to maximize your weight loss...I say if you can do this more power to you. But before every morning practice I know I need to eat something, anything, or I will simply not make it through the gruelling workout. So in college and high school I choose something small, quick and easy to digest. The best option was a Nature Valley Oats 'N Honey bar.  I think I ate enough of them in college to keep Nature Valley the company afloat...if only amazon had existed at that time and I could buy 96 bars for only 21 bucks

Here at healthify we are hoping to add a new time period to the answer, your lunch break! If your company gives you a full hour, why take 30 minutes of that to hit up some yoga, or a quick boxing class. There's plenty of time to hit the showers before heading back to the desk to enjoy your lunch.

Technori Pitch

Each month, I make my way down the stairs of the Chase auditorium with a few of my Kellogg School of Management buddies to listen to local startups pitch their companies at the Technori Pitch. We spent the time arguing over which companies are viable and which are not. This is by far the best pitch competition I have run across in the city of Chicago. The other great event on its level is the monthly Built in Chicago Launch Party, but BIC is more of networking/socializing/drinking/fun event while Technori is listen to 5 great startups and an awesome keynote speaker and then moving the local bar for some socializing.

But back to last nights pitch. The keynote was Andy Crestodina (@crestodina) cofounder of orbit media and he made some many good points about SEO and getting your site to the top of the google list. I used what he said and was able to get our site to come as the third option when someone googles healthify! Beyond SEO his main point was that we all know about our MVP (minimum viable product) but what about our MVA??? What is your minimum viable AUDIENCE? What customers do you need to have to actually make your company a success. Focus on interacting with your customers and you will have much more success. We at Healthify My Team focus on this every day by asking people what sort of activities they would like to see going on in their offices as a way to healthify their workspace. A recent conversation with a former professional athlete brought up the importance of warming up for a workout and wondered why people do not warm up for work? He suggested maybe offer a 30 minute early morning yoga or fitness session right before work to get people in the right mindset for their jobs. Great idea! We are certainly going to look into it and see what the minimum viable audience is for this type of activity. Can't wait until next months Technori Pitch! Tickets are not on sale yet, but get them here when they are!

Become a morning person...

Not everyone is a morning person. I spent almost two decades of my life getting into the pool before the sun rose almost every single day.

But after getting out of my final practice senior year of college I have completely done away with morning workouts. Try to wake me up before 7 and you better be ready to feel my wrath! Now i'm certainly not against morning workouts, as they were part of the reason I was able to succeed in the pool for so many years, i've just done too many of them so far in my life...But if YOU want to start to become a morning person, here is a great article on a few tips to start trying today!

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/24/how-to-become-morning-workout-person/?intcmp=features

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend All! It's time to get out those grills!

With the onset of the summer and the upcoming BBQ season, its more important than ever to try and stay healthy. I just read this article from The Huffington Post about a few tips for eating healthy at a BBQ while still having fun. I'd like to point out a few of my own personal tricks.

1. Don't binge eat! Its okay to have 1 or even 2 of those delicious cupcakes. It's not okay to put back 4 or 5.Your overall health is about long term averages. If you have been healthy for the week, go ahead and enjoy some sweets, but don't over do it. This same lesson applies to other great tasting, but not so healthy foods, such as pizza.

2. Drink water! While at any good BBQ there will be coolers and coolers of beer and sugar loaded drinks, try to space in a cup of water after every one. Not only will it help the hangover, but it will keep you hydrated for that intense game of kickball coming up. So before heading out, grab your favorite water bottle, fill it with ice water, and enjoy!

3. Choose your poison and enjoy it! By this I mean look at what kind of foods are at your BBQ and choose one of two that may be unhealthy but are your all time favorites. For me this is always the bag of doritos or other chips. So what do I do? I take a plate and choose a "normal" portion of chips, and put that aside for just me. Anytime I want some I go to that plate and only that plate. It makes sure you don't binge because you will have your amount of chips planned out.

4. Lastly have fun! Play as many active games as possible! Work up a nice sweat in the volleyball game, run the bases hard in kickball, chase down that arrant frisbee throw, but overal choose the active games play hard and have fun! If you can't enjoy the BBQ, why are you there!

Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day Weekend, and stay healthy!

Breathe in, Breathe out, HEALTHIFY!

3 Week Plan

About 3 weeks ago, I looked at my calendar and noticed I had the annual Kellogg verses Booth 2013 Graduate School of Business Tennis Challenge coming up. What I also realized is that I had not swung a racquet in 6 months and was likely going to blow my shoulder out trying to play tennis with the same reckless abandon that won me a Pennsylvania State Championship. So what did I do? I made three very small changes to my daily routines so that over three weeks my shoulder and legs would be ready to play without the risk of injury. What I changed:

1. Every day I got out the good ole stretch bands and worked my shoulders(5 minutes a day)
2. During my two weekly jogs I worked in 20 yards of running sideways on each side(5 minutes)
3. During my two or three weekly sessions in the gym I added some wrist and arm exercises(5 minutes)

These three small changes over the short period of time helped to rebuild the stabilizer muscles in my shoulder and get them ready to play multiple full matches. They were very minor changes that did not add hardly any time to my daily routine. And guess what? I won both my matches!!!

So you are probably asking what does this have to do with Healthifying my own job? The point here is that make small incremental changes, 5 minutes a day, can lead to drastically better health results over the long run. Pick a point 3 or 4 weeks down the road and change something small once a week or even better once a day. For instance take the stairs instead of that elevator up to the 5th floor just once or twice a week. How much extra  time did that take? 5 minutes? The time commitment is small but over those three weeks you will start to notice a difference!

And always remember:
Breathe in, Breathe out, HEALTHIFY!

Lunch Break

There is a growing trend in America of people using their lunch hours for more then just lunch. I know many large companies that are beginning to offer their employees great benefits such as on site yoga or discounts to gym classes. Healthify My Team was built to help the smaller companies give their employees these same great benefits but without having to dedicate any of their limited resources such as personnel or time to managing them.

I just ran into this great article on Mashable talking about creative ways to use your lunch break. Number 5 hits right at home with what we are offering to companies. That wonderful 60 minute break in the middle of your day is the perfect opportunity to "recharge your brain and your muscles with a lunch hour workout." Our goal at Healthify My Team is to offer on-site(yoga or boxing in a conference room) and offsite fitness(in a studio) activities that an employer can offer as a perk to help "Healthify" their employees. If you are interested in hearing more or want to sign up for a lesson you can email us any time at Richard@healthifymyteam.co and we'll set something up for you!!!

Inspire Pitch Event

First of all, we wanted to say thanks for a great event put on by the Inspire Business Center. Everyone should check out their website. http://www.inspirebusinesscenter.com/ The space was perfect for this type of pitch event and the co-working space looked great. It might even be our new home for the summer! It's tough to find a better deal then $100 for 3 months of co-working space.

Overall the event tonight was fantastic. 10 strong start-up companies all gave their pitch and there was a great speaker from Light Bank(http://www.lightbank.com/).

The main point of her talk was around the four most important things for a start-up to focus on: Market, Product, Traction and Team. We at Healthify couldn't agree more! We are building a strong diverse team, have our product ready to go and are starting to gain some traction in the marketplace!

We were able to meet some great potential customers and receive some valuable feedback on our company. Overall the night was fantastic, even if we didn't win.

Until the next time our paths cross, I will leave you with a small healthy challenge : It's the small changes in behavior that lead to an overall better fitness level and ultimately an overall better happiness level. So for the next week I'm challenging you to choose one lunch or dinner where you would have had a can of soda. At that meal I want you to choose a glass of water instead. That will save you at least 150 calories and if you are able to substitute it one day a week for 52 weeks, that is 7,800 calories and over two pounds of body fat you can eliminate by simply making a small change one day a week!

As always remember to:
Breathe in. Breathe out.  Healthify!

We are Healthify My Team and we are here to help you Healthify your workplace!