14: A New Approach to Optimizing Health: Graduated Exercise Protocol

After beating the health impacts of COVID, I applied a unique graduated exercise protocol that I can't wait to share with you. This transformative system, the key to my personal wellness success, has the potential to optimize your health, energy, and performance. What's more, it starts with something as simple as walking. With each week, we will progressively advance up to the next level of training. But fear not, you'll be equipped with the knowledge to track your progress safely and ensure consistent development.

I'll share a six-point system that isn't just about physical activities, it also focuses on understanding your central nervous system and optimal metrics. Let's take our energy and performance to heights you've only dreamed of, avoiding the pitfalls of workout burnout and plateauing. As a certified integrative health practitioner and consulting hypnotist, I've seen how impactful these strategies can be. Remember, true wellness isn't about ending an exercise routine drained, but maintaining energy throughout. So, join me on my Breaking Boundaries podcast, and let's embark on this journey of transforming our health together. And don't keep the goodness to yourself - share it with those you love and drop a review on your favorite podcast platform.
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Chapters

• 0:00 Optimizing Exercise for Wellness and Performance
• 17:15 The Graduated Exercise Program
• 22:43 Exercise and Wellness Journey Takeaways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:16

Healthy entrepreneurs know that they need to do what's specific for their body and mind in order to get well, to lose weight and increase their health span. Most people know that diet and exercise is where to begin to get healthy. However, not knowing this one thing and monitoring these six points can cause more boundaries than breakthroughs on your wellness journey. Hello, I'm Jeffrey Mort. If you're like most entrepreneurs, you're busy taking care of business. Yet who's taking care of you? As a certified integrative health practitioner and consulting hypnotist, I'm widely considered a leader for naturally improving energy and performance, as I've coached world-renowned entrepreneurs and athletes to higher performance, health and unstoppable confidence. Here you'll find no wasted time as we distill my unique blend of functional medicine, ancient wisdom and subconscious reprogramming into actionable steps to create ultra-healthy and laser-focused super achievers. If you're ready to take your energy and performance to the next level in your life and your business, then this podcast is for you, because today you're going to start breaking boundaries of your mind, body and business with integrative health, and when you do that, your possibilities are limitless. I'm grateful you're here. Yes, I'm always grateful for you joining me here today. Welcome to another Healthy Thursday episode of the Breaking Boundaries podcast for entrepreneurs. This is episode 14. Of course, you'll want to stay to the end when we bring it all together on how to avoid failure and reach your next level of success with integrative health. And for all today's show notes and links, visit JeffreyMortcom and click on the podcast link. So the fact that you're here watching or listening today means that you're the kind of entrepreneur who values your health as your greatest asset, and the last thing you want to do is waste your time or money or both, creating more boundaries by doing something you think is leading you in the right direction, only to find yourself further behind. So today you're going to discover exactly when and how to uplevel your exercise program, even if you don't have one yet. The boundary that we're talking about today is not knowing this one thing, as I alluded to in the intro, and that one thing is what are you optimizing for? What's the end goal? What is your intention for this next segment of your health journey? Is it weight loss? Is it wellness? Is it body transformation? Is it longevity? Because the plan for each of those is vastly different, and starting with the wrong approach can cost you your greatest asset, which is your health.

Speaker 1: 5:12

I want to sort of talk a little bit about my backstory, and you may or may not have heard me mention this before, but here I am guiding you on this journey. And on my journey back in 2015, I was a mess. I really was. I was a mess and that's. That was my turning point, where I know it's cliche, but I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired and I made the conscious choice to do something about it, and that's something my lead domino is, as many of you have heard before, was Tai Chi and Qi Gong traditional Chinese medicine, martial arts and I made some amazing progress. I'll do an episode specifically on Tai Chi and Qi Gong and what that's all about, but I made some amazing, amazing progress and continuous progress and sustainable progress.

Speaker 1: 6:02

And then I ended up getting COVID, and I ended up getting long COVID and that absolutely erased years of work. I literally had to start all over, and even if I were to do once I felt as though I could maybe do even a light workout and I'm talking my Tai Chi practice or Chi Gong practice it would send me into a downward spiral, flu-like symptoms for days. It was horrible and I wish to never revisit that again, but I am grateful for that lesson that I went through so that I can help other people that are in that position. And what did I do? Well, I worked this particular system right here that I'm gonna explain in one minute, plus the de-stress protocol. So that's diet, exercise, which we're covering today, stress reduction, toxin removal, rest, emotional balance, science-backed supplements and the success mindset. And I use that to get back on track. But it took time and knowing where I was at that time or at any moment was the key to my success. And I mentioned the de-stress protocol and diet and exercise.

Speaker 1: 7:22

So last Tuesday we covered an episode on diet. This, I'm sorry Thursday. Last Thursday we covered an episode on diet. This Thursday, here we're covering an episode on exercise. And every healthy Thursday episode we're going to go through the de-stress protocol and cover a new topic on those eight points. So the plan here, here's the plan we're gonna give you. This is a six-point plan today we're gonna give you.

Speaker 1: 7:49

And point number one is we want to monitor the central nervous system. We wanna monitor the fatigue of the central nervous system. So I'm gonna give you things to watch for here. And if there were just two ways that I could help the majority of people heal. The first way is to calm the central nervous system and get that to reboot and shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic, from fight or flight to rest and relax. So that's way number one. And the other way that I would help people is to heal and seal the gut. If I just work on those two things and nothing else, I would be able to. Well, I can help 99.9% of people out there that need help with their wellness, with their weight loss, with their longevity, their high performance goals.

Speaker 1: 8:43

So the next thing you wanna check, besides having awareness of your fatigue level, of fatigue in central nervous system, is point number two is having a lower basal metabolic temperature. What does that mean? That means you're waking temperature. So there's pretty much three things to look for here when talking about your lower basal waking metabolic temperature. And if you are lower than 98 degrees upon waking, that should be a warning light on your dashboard of life. And if you're lower than 98. Now, some people very limited amount of people vary from that, but anywhere they say 98.6 is the average of the normal, but 98.1 to 98.9, anywhere in that range is considered normal. Lower than 98 degrees upon waking is reason for not alarm but for monitoring, like, hey, I gotta keep an eye on this and what's up with that? Now, if you are 97 degrees somewhere, anywhere in that 97 degree range 97.1, 97.9, that means you're in the parasympathetic nervous system. So you are in the repair mode at that point and now that warning light maybe goes from yellow to orange little more reason for concern. And then if you're 96 degrees or lower, or anywhere in that 96 degree range 96.1, 96.9, or lower than 96, 95.9, now you're in deep parasympathetic nervous system and your body is really trying to do some repair work. So those are three things to look at. And what's the best way to take your temperature? Probably in your ear would be the best and most convenient way upon waking, and we'll talk about the tools that you can use in just a minute.

Speaker 1: 10:44

So next point, number three in this six-point plan lower blood pressure upon waking and before bed. So if you're above 130 over 85 for your blood pressure, you know 120 over 80 is said to be ideal, but if you're over above 130, over 85, that's a concern. And then if you're lower, you know 120 over 80, so if you're, you know, much lower than that, you know maybe 118 over 60 or something like that. You know you want to watch your blood pressure and if it's lower upon waking or before bed or above, you know, above that normal range, your body's telling you something. These are warning signs that something is off in your system, especially with your nervous system, your central nervous system. That's what we're looking at here. So these are signed for CNS central nervous system fatigue.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Next point, number four, is hypoglycemia. So hypoglycemia, any time of the day, if you are, well, let's, let's look at this in both ranges. If you are above a 95 upon waking, then you know. And hypoglycemia is your blood sugar levels. So this is really easy to monitor. Of course you can do this with a continuous glucose monitor or you can do it with instantaneous glucose test strip, the old traditional type. But there's, there's great technology nowadays with a continuous glucose monitor. You know you can wear that for 30 days and really get a good idea for where you are with your blood sugar levels. So if you are below a 95, oh, I'm sorry, above a 95 upon waking, or below a 65, this is central nervous system stress. That's a good indicator of central nervous system stress, right there.

Speaker 1: 12:44

Next point, number five, is an elevated heart rate. So if you have a heart rate above, let's say, 75 beats per minute or higher, then that is reason for concern. And this is, of course, upon waking. If you're waking up with that 75 beats per minute, now you know, a light walk can actually get you into zone two, cardio somewhere between 100 and 120 beats per minute. So this is definitely upon waking. If you're waking up with a heart rate, heart rate above 75 beats per minute, then that's a good indicator of central nervous system fatigue.

Speaker 1: 13:22

And then, point number six, you can use a heart rate variability monitor. This is a great indicator for your stress on your nervous system. You know low heart rate variability indicates stress. How low that all depends on the individual. That all depends on you know what your baseline is and what your normal is. So you would have to get an HRV monitor. You know Apple Watch works really well, but mainly only when sleeping at night. If you want a continuous HRV monitor, hanu is a great device. We can link that up in the show notes so you can check that out. They're very reasonable and really easy to use.

Speaker 1: 14:03

It's a monitor that has a strap, goes around your chest. The monitor is small, fits right on your chest plate and it monitors continuous, real-time heart rate variability and the higher your heart rate variability. And HRV is the space in between your heart rate, so it's measuring the gap in between the beats. So if there's a longer duration in between the beats of the heart, then that is a good indicator of a strong, robust immune system and health and wellness. So it takes some time to get your baseline. If you wore this thing for 30 days, that would give you a good idea of where you're at and a good indicator of your heart rate variability.

Speaker 1: 14:50

And just like in business, in business you need to know your numbers. If you wanna know how your business is doing and the health of your business in real time, you need to know your numbers on a weekly, maybe even daily basis, quarterly basis. That's huge in business. So in health it's the same thing. You need to know your numbers. So, monitoring your fatigue for your central nervous system, you wanna watch your basal metabolic temperature waking up. You want to monitor your blood pressure. You want to monitor your blood sugar, your glycemic level, you want to measure your heart rate and, if you can, your heart rate variability. And all of these health assessment tools are on our website over at loveenergywellnesscom, forward slash slash resources. You can check it out over there and there's. You can set up your own little home based doctor's office for as little as say, $99 for the tools to measure most of these things here.

Speaker 1: 15:53

So your call to action here today is your goal is to never overtax the central nervous system while it's rebuilding the body. It's doing things that your body is producing metabolic waste and it takes energy and effort to clear that waste out. And then, of course, if your central nervous system is being taxed, then you're having more alkaline mineral buffering going on in your body. There's a system that will buffer the alkaline minerals to counter tissue acidity. If you're working the muscles too hard, it creates acidity in the tissues and then your body has to work harder to counteract that with mineral buffering. And then, of course, there's mitochondrial damage which, back to my experience having long COVID that's really what happened is it's a cycle of mitochondrial damage that leads to inflammation, which leads to more mitochondrial damage, which leads to more inflammation. And it was just this vicious cycle that I had to really ease myself out of, to help my body to rest and relax and restore and rebuild itself so that I could get back into the exercise program that I wanted to and it took, like I said, it took a while.

Speaker 1: 17:15

So number two, when you call the action here, is move up in this order. So this is how we do. We start with Simply walking. I know it sounds really basic and maybe really boring and it doesn't sound like the workout maybe that you want. But you know, just start walking on an average of thirty five hundred steps per day. That's with the average person walks and an increase by ten minutes per day, total each week and then in six weeks you'll be at the ten steps per day. So that's, you know, a month and two weeks. That you'll be at your ten thousand steps per day is what your target is. That's what you're aiming for. Ten thousand steps per day, you know, if you can get, you know, seventy five hundred steps, that's fantastic on an average. If you're getting ten thousand steps per day, that is amazing and that's where we start.

Speaker 1: 18:03

Then next we move into cardiovascular training and this makes a difference if you're gonna train, if you're gonna do cardio training in the morning or in the afternoon or the evening. So if your central nervous system is taxed and you're stressed and your body is in fight or flight mode, you most likely don't want to start your day off with a workout. You may want to shift that to the afternoon or maybe even early evening, not too late in the day Talk about that in a minute. But cardiovascular exercise stands for steady state cardio done on something like an exercise bike or other easier modality, and keeping the heart rate below seventy percent max, the O2 exertion for ten to thirty minutes maximum before moving up, and you can do this with three sessions per week. That's the initial goal and keeping that forty eight hours apart Is what you want to do for your cardiovascular training easing, easing into it, and then eventually you can get into cardio more days during the week and move that into morning. But if you're rebuilding your body and you have signs of metabolic stress and you know the the metrics that we spoke about earlier being out of the ideal range, then you want to ease yourself into this. So forty eight hours apart to begin three sessions per week is your initial goal.

Speaker 1: 19:26

Next we move in, we move up the scale and we move up to weight training, and this weight training can be considered strength conditioning, body transformation. Again, it all depends on what you are optimizing for, because a workout with weights is different for strength training, for conditioning training or for body transformation. So begin with body weight only exercises at one set. You can't do less than that. You can't do less than your body weight and you can't do less than one set. So start there and then move in to two to three sets and then graduate to lighter weight training at maybe ten to fifteen rap ranges, so as not to strain the nervous system. You're trying to not tax your central nervous system and aim for two to three workouts. Maybe keep it at two workouts per week and you want to keep these forty, eight to seventy two hours apart. So that's every two days or every three days.

Speaker 1: 20:25

You want to keep this some, this weight training apart, and then then we can move up to our highest level, which is interval training. Now this can be met con, which stands for metabolic conditioning. This could be hit training, which is high intensity interval training hi it. Or it could be sit training, which is sprint interval training, hi. And then, after you've built up to weight and resistance training, your nervous system should now be sufficiently strong enough to begin testing out some low volume interval training. So doing this once a week, then moving into twice a week and then starting three to five intervals at first is what I would recommend.

Speaker 1: 21:11

So this is what we call the graduated exercise program or graduated exercise protocol. So this is part of the exercise regiment in the de stress protocol and this is the graduated exercise program, and you can see how we we moved through walking and then cardiovascular training and then we moved up to weight training and then we moved up to interval training. This is what I share with my private wellness practice clients. I love energy wellness as part of the de-stress protocol, and I give them specific workout templates to follow for whatever stage they are at and for wherever they're. Whatever they're optimizing for whether that's wellness, weight loss, body transformation or longevity or something else energy performance we have a program that will fit any of that criteria.

Speaker 1: 22:01

So I'm here, as always, my friends, to help you to avoid failure, because if you're going from zero to CrossFit, that's going to set you back. That's going to be a boundary for you. If you're doing too much of one thing at the wrong time, it's going to result in new health, energy and performance boundaries for you. For sure I want you to be able to share your success story with me and others and your friends and family. I want you to lead by example. I want you to have the confidence that you have the right guide by your side on your graduated exercise program. I want you to have progress without setbacks and I want this to be sustainable for you.

Speaker 1: 22:39

Remember never leave an exercise with less energy than when you began.

Speaker 1: 22:43

That's a good indicator if you are doing too much when it comes to exercise. Besides taking all your metrics into morning when you wake up to see where you're at. But never leave an exercise with less energy than when you began. So your three key takeaways from this episode today, this Healthy Thursday exercise episode have awareness. Have awareness on your goals. Have awareness of your metrics. Have awareness of your metrics on where you are at this particular time. Follow the graduated exercise protocol that I just gave you. And then, number three, I will meet you wherever you are right now, because I'm 100% committed to your wellbeing and keeping you safe on your wellness journey. I'm grateful for you joining me today. If this was helpful for you, please share it with those that you love your friends, your family, your colleagues, your coworkers. And, if you could please leave a review over on your favorite podcast platform. Only takes a minute, it really does, and that'll help us to reach more people, and with that, my friends. I will see you next time to help you with breaking boundaries. Take care, bye, bye.