Healthy High Achiever Blog

As you know, Performance Lifestyle was born in the Athletic community, and not surprisingly. Athletes unlike crazed parents, business people and students have a more accurate understanding of what it means to perform well. It is about productivity and winning, but first and foremost it’s about making sure you can perform "well", and that’s a matter of lifestyle.

Well, as I was reading a conference summary for cutting edge sports nutrition information, from the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine and the results from over 5,000 exercise scientists, sports dietitians, physicians and coaches who gathered in Indianapolis in May to share their latest research; I always look for ideas that will help Healthy High Achievers who are not sports athletes perform, look and feel better.

There was one insight in particular that really stood out… it was about the elite athletes’ ability to recover (soccer players in this case).

Here is one of the sports nutrition highlights. 

How long do elite soccer players need to recover from a game? In one study, they needed five days for sprinting ability to return to pre-game level. That’s four days longer than most athletes allow…

Think about this for a second. These are elite athletes we’re talking about here and they need 4 days to recover?

Now take the average business person who is working 10 -12 hours per day or more who is trying to train intensely or consistently every day and consider why they my run into obstacles and stall periodically.

In other words, most people set their expectations too high, don’t have the lifestyle to support their training success and don’t factor in everything else going on in their life that is drawing down on the same energy and time, need to recover. This needless to say, affects the results you experience.

Healthy High Achievers know how to gauge their activity levels… it’s all part of the science of Personal Energy Management.

Here are some of the other findings from the conference as written by Nancy Clarke.

John Allen Mollenhauer is the Founder of Performance Lifestyle Solutions, the better healthier ways to achieve your goals in life, business and sport. As a former worn down workaholic turned healthy, high achiever John Allen (aka “JAM”) will teach you how to Live Like a Pro, optimizing your lifestyle the way athletes do. He is the creator of the Healthy High Achiever - Unleash the Full Potential of Your Lifestyle to Look, Feel and Perform Better!

I just read one of the most brilliant ads ever!

It was in this week’s Wall Street Journal. An ad by the Select Comfort Company, for their Sleep Number Bed.

Here’s what it said:

BEING TIRED IS NOT NORMAL. Feeling like you need to wake up right after you wake up - not normal. Requiring stimulants to toast break in the morning - not normal, and quite frankly, a little sad.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

CAFFEIN WON’T FIX TIRED. A quintuple-shot latte will prop your eyelids open long enough to butter your bagel, but two hour later tired is back. And this time it’s mad!

How about an energy bar, a power smoothie, a beverage with a picture of an animal skull on it - hey, how about CAFFINATED MINTS?!!

Dagnabbit. A little wine might help, or there this new pill that’ll put you right out. You’ll just need more coffee so you won’t be groggy, then a little something to stop the twitching from all the caffeine, throw in that new African stimulant root, a pill with speakers in it, listen to dolphins mating - stop it. That’s tired thinking and it will get you nowhere. Here’s an idea: Let’s stop trying to wake ourselves up and, instead, find a better way to sleep.

This articles goes on to talk about the Coil Spring Mattress… my parents have one of these and they love it!!

But what I really like about this ad besides its bold expression about the truth, is that it introduced an idea similar to the term "diet speak" that I use regularly to describe the house of cards conversation the diet industry maintains to keep you dieting. In this case it’s called "tired talk" and it’s the conversation the stimulant industry maintains to keep you caught up, consuming their "exhausting products".

Most people suffer from "Tired Talk". I know this, I suffered from it for years, thinking there was nothing I could do about it and that was a lemming mindset. All that thinking did, was drive me further off the cliff.

Tired talk is all that stuff you’re saying when you’re tired, and then defaulting to all that stuff the Select Comfort company is talking about above. The only way to increase your energy is to recuperate!

Download the Performance Lifestyle Manifesto and test drive the method for getting completely free of "Tired Talk" and getting your energy back. The real lifestyle solution. It’s the Performance Lifestyle Formula For Breakthrough Energy.

On February 13th, 2007 the Wall Street Journal ran a full page article titled HIGH PERFORMANCE: Serial, Timely Transformations Help Successful Companies Stay Ahead of the Curve.

In the first paragraph is goes on to say "It took man about 3 million years to evolve and create companies. By contrast, companies have about the blink of an eye to evolve or become dinosaurs". The rest of the article goes on to talk about how technological change has essentially sped things up to a lightening fast pace (as we all know at this point) and gives a 4-prong plan of attack for companies that want to win at the Darwinian game.