Changing habits into healthy ones with EMS fitness
Do you brush your teeth every day? Do you floss? Do you do these things every day?
Most people do, and I hope you do too.
Now, imagine going two days without brushing your teeth because work was hectic. Imagine not brushing your teeth for an entire week because you’re on vacation.
Unthinkable, right?
Short term we brush our teeth to avoid bad breath and bacteria build-up. Long term, it protects our teeth and gums against cavities and more serious issues. It’s a habit usually instilled very early in our lives, it doesn’t take long to do, and we don’t require motivation to do it, and don’t do extensive research on the benefits of it. We just do it.
In other words, brushing your teeth is quick, you do it without thinking or listening to your emotions about it, you already know the benefits, and you can’t comfortably go to bed knowing you didn’t brush your teeth.
Now replace “brushing your teeth” with “exercise.” Have you gone two days without exercising? Have you ever taken a vacation and not exercised for its entire duration? It’s easy to imagine the same scenarios and not even bat an eye about not exercising. Yet, in comparison, the list of benefits of physical activity is a lot longer than that of brushing your teeth.
Short term, exercise helps with changing your mood, fighting depression and anxiety, increasing blood flow, sharpening mental focus, and boosting energy, among other physiological effects.
Long term, exercise will get you stronger, more endurant, give you more stamina, can prevent injuries, help heal from them, and most importantly, exercise will help prevent ALL non-acute infectious diseases.
- Yeah, yeah, but brushing your teeth takes 2 minutes.
Although there are national recommendations about how much time you should dedicate to physical activity for health benefits, you don’t have to start there. As you can see in the footnote, they mention dedicating 5 minutes to begin.
An easy way to make healthier changes in your habits is to combine the new habit with an existing one. While brushing your teeth for 2 minutes, stand on one leg while brushing the upper teeth, and switch legs when doing the lower teeth for example.
- Yeah, yeah, but brushing your teeth is not hard so it doesn’t require motivation.
Brushing your teeth has become automated, similar to locking your door each time you leave the house or setting your alarm for the next day. For each of these examples, there’s a cue (closing house door, getting into bed), a behavior (locking door, setting alarm), and a reward (feeling safe after locking door, feeling assured you’ll wake up on time). This is called the habit loop. For example, every time you hit traffic, squeeze your shoulder blades 15 times to help fix your posture.
- Yeah, yeah, but 2 minutes here, and 2 minutes there is not going to help with losing 20 lbs.
I disagree. Short-term, you’re right, it won’t help, but long-term it certainly can because of the indirect effect of dedicating more attention to physical activity. Our brains have something called “selective attention” where once you’ve paid a bit of attention to something, more attention is drawn to it. This can happen voluntarily or involuntarily, and the activation can come from internal or external sources. As an example, I just moved to Los Angeles and started noticing there are a lot of Tesla cars circulating. Every time I drive, I notice them. Yet Tesla only has about 10% of the market share in California versus 18% for Toyota, that’s almost double the number of cars that I don’t notice at all. If you’re interested in learning more, you can take this selective attention test.
Back to exercise. Once you start sprinkling exercise into other routines with some consistency, you are much more likely to give it more time and space in your life because you’re constantly reminding yourself of it.
The habit of thinking of exercise more often will often spill into other areas as well. I’ve noticed this in many clients. Once they’ve trained for a few weeks I’ll get more questions about changing their diet, or how to improve specific activities such as hiking or swimming.
- Yeah, yeah, but I don’t really know what I should be doing.
Great, that means you’re not burdened with what you should do and can select what you want to do. I would recommend picking an exercise you enjoy. Dancing? Great, dance while brushing your teeth. Do you want to increase your balance? Stand on one leg while waiting for your tea or coffee to heat up.
- Yeah, yeah, but I feel tired all the time, and this already feels like a chore.
Feelings aren’t facts. Sometimes you need to challenge your feelings to see if you’re mentally tired or physically tired. If you’re both, still perform most of the habit.
If you’ve decided your new habit is going for a run every day, but you woke up feeling too tired to run, at least do most of the habit: take out your sneakers, put them on, and walk outside for a few minutes to breathe some fresh air. At that point, you may actually start feeling like going for a run, or just turn around and walk back inside. Congratulations! You’ve accomplished 90% of the habit, the last 10% is actually running. This will help maintain the habit long term.
- Cool, so how does this relate to EMS fitness?
EMS fitness provides several advantages over conventional training. It’s a short workout, yet just as effective as dedicating a full hour to lifting weights. It must be done with a certified personal trainer, so you’ll get an appointment, the accountability, and the motivation to be active. More importantly, two EMS workouts a week will cover all your resistance training needs.
We can also cover some of the cardiovascular needs by mixing in cardio with our Metcon Program or going full cardio with our Torch Program. These programs have cardiovascular effects because they are high-intensity interval training and include power and agility exercises.
If you are interested in learning more about changing healthy habits or finding out if EMS would be a good option to be active, book a free consultation with me here: https://calendly.com/conradfitness/30min
Conrad
Director of Education and Technology
Bodybuzz
Bodybuzz combines Certified Personal Training with Electrical Muscle Stimulation, giving your body a deeper, safer, and more effective workout. 20 minutes twice a week is all it takes!
Our personal trainers will guide you through a custom EMS workout designed specifically for you. Whether you’re looking to build strength, lose weight, get toned, or recover from an injury or illness, we offer a safe, low-impact solution to help get you there.
EMS has now been FDA-cleared for use in the US and we are proud to be one of the first companies to introduce this technology. It is a full-body workout that uses a special muscle stimulating suit that sends low-level impulses to your major muscle groups to trigger muscle contractions. It’s a unique sensation that is painless and invigorating. EMS workouts are designed to achieve optimal conditioning, burn fat, develop strength, build muscle, tighten skin, combat cellulite, jump-start your metabolism and restore your body’s natural balance.