Join Mike in this sixth episode of the Happy Manager video series as he breaks down how physical health can improve the performance of your team and yourself. Learn simple steps such as hitting the 10,000 steps daily and a full-body mobility routine to get started on the path to better health. Don't let fitness trends on the internet dictate your health plan. Be inspired by your grandparents' example and start improving your team's performance today!
Transcript from video
Hello, connections. Mike here. We're on our sixth video in the Happy Manager video series.
We call it the Happy Manager video. But if you wanna be happier, it's gonna help you as well, but by largest geared towards managers and people leaders. So most of our previous videos have been around the mindset of being healthier being happier towards being more balanced.
Today, we're gonna go a little bit more into specifics and tactics. We're gonna talk about physical health, our fitness, our bodies. Why is this so important today then? You might be saying I'm a manager in a bank. Why do I need to know anything about fitness? Well, again, if we go back in time, fifty to one good year. Most people would have not everybody, but most people would have had relatively good fitness because they had to move for their jobs. They had to move stuff around. They had to generally be active to survive. Today, that can't be any further from the truth. Most of us sit for our jobs, so we spend extended periods of time in a natural position, which affects our posture. Most of us just don't move enough, something that was exasperated by the lockdown. We now our virtual work in. So lots of people if they don't check or consciously try and address it, we'll we can legitimately get through a day. We have taken two thousand steps, which has been unheard of in human history before.
It used to be impossible to do so. There are other changes as well, we don't carry our shopping anymore we've got trolleys. We don't even have to go shopping. We can have it delivered to our doors. We can order food cooked for us. We don't even have to go through the process of cooking it for ourselves. So we're a field away from a far field away from where we used to be. So moving is no longer built into our lives. It's something we have to consciously make happen. You as a manager or as a people leader. You've gotta do that as well because it's gonna make you feel like crap if you don't. People are gonna look up to what you're doing and they're gonna see you as a role model. So when it comes to improving our body health, what I want you to do is get away from looking at the internet
even though we're on the internet and listening to the people on Instagram that tell you
need to be going to the gym five times a week or three times a week, whatever it might be to the people that have got their tops off telling you that this is what you can look like if you do ABC you're gonna ignore all that because that's not healthy.
That's people that are naturally quite fit. Yes. They work for it as well. But they're using their bodies to market some of you don't actually want. So what we've got to do is get what we call a minimum viable product for health. Okay? And for most of us, what that looks like is getting enough steps in a day and taking our body for a full-body mobility routine. It's as simple as that. How many steps does a human need a day to be healthy? We don't know exactly lots of people talk about ten thousand steps. I like ten thousand steps a day. I do about a step a second, which work which works out roughly to about an hour
and forty for me to do ten thousand steps over the day, I find that if I sit for too much longer than six hours a day without breaking up and walking, I'd start feeling a bit rubbish. So ten thousand steps a day is a good number.
I've done some research on it and it suggests six to sixteen thousand was the kind of steps of hunter-gatherers on average. We don't know. But really, it's what works for you. Test it. You know, get out there and move and see, okay, well, I did this many steps this day and I felt great at the end of the day. I did this many steps this day and I felt rubbish, I felt sluggish. So find a number that works for you, but I think you're pretty safe for ten thousand steps.
Now what that does is, you obviously feel good, but it works your heart and your lungs. It keeps your heart and lungs healthy when your heart and lungs are working, they stay healthy. The body works and you use it or lose it principle. When you're not using your heart and lungs, they start to get weaker, you become more susceptible to disease, more susceptible to issues. And you just generally, your metabolism drops, and you don't feel very good. The second one then is a mobility routine, and this is to help you with your posture. Again, the body works on a use it or lose it principle. So If you don't use certain parts of your body for a long period of time, they start to switch off. And what we commonly find is that because we spend a lot of time seated. Then over forwards, all these muscles on the back here start to dissipate and not work very well.
All these muscles on the start to get tight, all these muscles here get tight, we start to feel the tension in our necks, but our posture goes off. We're more prone to injury. So minimum viable product, we need to make sure that we're moving our joints for a full range of motion every day. That sounds complicated, but you can do it in less than ten minutes you head over to the Better Happy website, and you'll get a little pop-up to come up to give you a free download. You can actually download a guide there and it's got our workplace mobility router seen in there. It's there for free. So that shows you how to move your body every day
for a full range of motion in less than ten minutes.
I recommend doing that twice a day. So if we're getting enough steps in and we're taking our body for a full-body mobility routine once or twice a day, we're doing enough to have good physical body health. You don't need to do any more than that. What will probably happen is you'll feel good about that and maybe want to do more. But just to achieve baseline body health, that's all you need to do. Try when you're thinking about health, not to get put off by the Internet. And nobody said this. I'm gonna finish off on this point now. But try and think about some of the IQ coin grandparents' health. So my man is one the healthiest people I know, my man and grandad. And they don't really go to a gym.
They don't really do intense exercise. I don't think she's run a step in in the last five,
ten years of her life. You don't need to do all that stuff, you know. She just walks a lot.
They move a lot. They play golf. Luckily, for them. But they just walk and she does her mobility in her house as well. So try to think more about Man Health than you do about Instagram. local woman with their top-off, ripped health because that's the wrong thing.
Want to find out how well you're currently set up to support your managers & discover the best next steps?
It's free and takes less than 2 minutes.
Mike Jones Better Happy Founder
Mike founded Better Happy in 2018.
He now works with a variety of businesses ranging from small accountancies up to large organisations such as Travelodge on improving employee happiness. Mike's vision and the vision of Better Happy is 'Every employee happy, every business thriving'