Here's 2022's first edition of Kinsei-Do Fitness Nuggets, our monthly newsletter that serves you little bites of health & performance wisdom!
Enjoy!
Nugget of the Week
Social Jetlag
I'm sure you're familiar with the phenomenon of jetlag, and have sure experienced its annoying effects before. But did you know you don't have to leave your time zone or travel anywhere to be hit by jetlag? In fact, more likely than not, you are experiencing jetlag symptoms far more often than you think, and not only that, you're voluntarily causing your body to have them!
"Social jetlag" occurs when you sleep and wake up on a (very) different schedule on weekends compared to regular weekdays - or when you engage in shift-work - and it can really mess your body and brain up!
Let's say you typically go to bed around 10pm and wake around 6am to go to work or school, but on Friday and Saturday nights, you "live it up" and instead go to bed at 1am or 2am, and then sleep in until 10am the next morning... well, you're essentially putting your body through a four hour time zone shift (as much as if you were to travel from Indonesia to the Middle East, or from the West Coast of the US to the East Coast!).
Needless to say, this can be detrimental to your health, with sleep disorders and digestive issues some of the first problems to show up. So what can you do about that?
Ideally, you try to avoid putting your body through this shift as much as possible, by sleeping and waking on a relatively consistent schedule, regardless of whether it's a working day or a weekend.
But if that sounds utterly uncool and "what's the point of having a weekend"-ish to you, there are still things you can do to help your body deal with the adjustment better:
1) See and avoid light at the right times: expose yourself to (natural, if possible) light in the morning as soon as you can after waking up (on a Saturday and Sunday). But also avoid looking at bright lights (including screens) late in the evening, thus trying to keep your body clock to remain in its "weekday time zone".
2) Eat and exercise at the same times as you would on weekdays, so that means taking your breakfast soon after waking up on Saturday and Sunday, and not having your dinner (much) later than you would on a regular weekday.
Give it a try and you should find that Monday mornings will perhaps get a little bit easier!
What's new?
We are tweeting again! Follow kinsei_do on Twitter for regularly delivered mini nuggets of health and performance tips and tricks!
Since launching the Kinsei-Do Corner Podcast in 2020, we've had some great guests on the show, amazing fitness professionals from all over Indonesia and incredible human beings, but the latest guest speaker plays in a totally different league.
In the last edition of the newsletter, which admittedly is already quite a while ago, I wrote about three different podcasts that I really love and enjoy, and from which I've learnt a great deal.
Well, I have recently discovered another podcast, after hearing this show's host speak to Tim Ferriss on the Tim Ferriss Show (a long term favourite of mine):
Granted, I've only listened to about 4 or 5 episodes so far - they are pretty long and my commute, thankfully, is not - but I've been nothing short of blown away. Dr. Huberman takes complex information and packages it in an interesting and compelling way, and even cracks the odd joke or two here and there.
This is the episode I started with, and if the "fitness nugget" at the top of this newsletter was even remotely interesting for you, you will surely love this episode, so check it out today!
What's Jo doing?
Since September 2021, I've been enrolled in the Hintsa Performance Coach certification program - the company that coaches over 90% of Formula 1 drivers and teams - and have learnt an immense lot in these past 4 months, far more than I could talk about here.
Let's just say that while in the past, as is common in the fitness bootcamp and also functional fitness space, I have referred to myself as a "coach", it is through this program that I have had to realize that I was actually a "trainer" and not a coach.
A trainer tells you what to do, and helps you to do it, and many times that can be enough and exactly what you need.
But a coach helps you to discover what you want and need, teaches you the tools to empower you to excel, and guides you towards this destination.
It might sound like a minor difference, but trust me, it's huuuuuge, and I can't wait to really start coaching my clients - and for sure as part of this I will also still be training them! - and make a real difference not only to their fitness, but to their Health & Performance!
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