- The stress is seriously starting
to set in right now
and I'm sure you're feeling it.
The holidays, family, work, budget, time,
everything is just seeming
to run out of control and because of that,
overwhelm just seems to run like through the roof
and it all just starts to run out of control
when you lose the ability to keep it all juggled
and balanced at the right time.
I'm gonna give you five really quick
and easy tips that are gonna help you maintain
both your mental and your physical sanity
so that you can actually be around your family
without them wanting to banish you
until the next holiday season.
If this is your first time here, welcome.
I'm Shane Farmer and this is Dark Horse Rowing.
And we build better humans through rowing
so that you can build the life
that you wanna live as well.
Tip number one, workout.
That was easy.
I'm just kidding, it's not actually that easy
but the point is you do need to place fitness
at the top of your priority list
as you go through the season.
Everything gets busy, schedules get packed.
You need to set it in your calendar,
set an alarm on your phone, tell the people around you
that you need to do this
in order to keep your insanity
and people will often respect those boundaries.
The goal of this is just show up
every time the alarm goes off and you'd be amazed.
Even just five minutes of quality moving
for your body is going to keep you
in a much better attitude.
You're gonna stay happier
and it's all gonna snowball into this positivity effect
as you move through the holidays
as opposed to getting bogged down and falling behind.
Number two, everything in moderation,
including moderation itself.
And what do I mean by that?
Well, it's very normal with the amount of travel you have,
the busyness factor.
You're not going to get the same quality foods
that you're used to eating every day
through the span of this entire holiday season
or through the holidays.
You're going to be going to company dinners
and food, cookies and cakes are brought into work
and you're gonna have to sit at meals
where you didn't get to choose all the food
that was prepared.
It's okay.
Forgive yourself and allow yourself
to indulge when you want to.
But that also means that you are responsible
for exercising some restraint as well.
Just be kind to yourself.
Exercise some restraint, indulge a little bit.
Have fun and enjoy the season as well.
Number three is a favorite trick of mine
for really calming down on the rowing machine
and it's called closed-eye rowing.
When you go to workout,
I want you to sit on the machine
and set more of a longer duration workout
with no intervals, not an interval-based workout.
Tune on some very calming music.
For me, that's classical music
with just instrumentals, no vocals
and then I'm just gonna close my eyes
and row without worrying at all
what my results or the monitor are going to say.
In fact, I'll throw a towel over it
or fld the monitor down
because it's not the results we're looking for
that are on the monitor,
the results are the ability
to stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system.
What is that?
That's our calming system.
It's what happens when you breath slowly or pray or mediate
or whatever you wanna call it or what you do.
Our sympathetic is what ramps us up
and we're always living in that when we're stressed.
We need some opportunities to turn on that parasympathetic
and mellow out
and that's what closed-eye rowing can do for you.
Number four, join your friends.
Lean on the people that you know you can trust
to help keep you accountable.
A few ways of doing that
are early on, set a weekly workout
that you do with your friends.
Maybe there's just once a week
where you are accountable
to showing up and getting in some movement
and exercise and just connecting with people
who are also trying to de-stress.
Another great way, call those family members
that you're gonna end up seeing,
the ones that you know will go for that hike with you
or go for that walk with you and prep them.
Say hey, I'm really trying to stay on it this year.
Will you do me a favor?
When we get together,
promise that every morning we'll go for a walk together
or promise me that we'll go for a nice long hike together.
You're gonna both get quality time
with these people that help you
and are also gonna benefit from that
and you're gonna also just get some de-stress time,
some downtime away from all of the food,
from all of the gifts
and all of the energy and it's gonna let you get outside
and relax a little bit.
Number five is the final 15-minute window before bed.
I'm gonna charge you with taking advantage
of a calming activity in that final 15 minutes.
Why?
It's because a calming activity
is going to set your brain and your body
to hit the pillow and get the most out off your time in bed.
Sleep is absolutely critical
to keeping stress low,
giving your body a chance to repair
and ensuring that you're getting enough sleep every night
is gonna be unbelievably important.
So choose an activity
like personally, I love a hot shower
in the dark 15 minutes before bed.
Maybe that's not your thing.
Maybe it's reading.
Maybe it's breath work.
Maybe it's meditation or prayer
or just sitting on the couch by yourself
with no screen in front of your face.
All I'm asking, the final 15 before bed,
no screens and then take that activity
and just put that head on the pillow
and you're gonna end up with a much better rest period.
I know, I said five, I'm gonna give you two bonuses.
One came up while I was actually recording this
and I just felt like I needed to say it.
Get your water in.
Oh man, this one's so big.
I can't believe this was not one of the original ones.
Get your water in.
Keep a glass of water on you at all times.
There's gonna be such a high likelihood
that you're taking in copious amounts of caffeine
and soda and alcohol and I'm not judging
on any of those right now,
all I care about is that you get plenty of water
in your system.
Just promise me.
Lots of glasses of water.
For any non-water drink you have,
drink a glass of water.
That's your ratio.
One glass of something, one glass of water.
Just tit for tat.
All the way through the holiday season, it's gonna help.
The other bonus is I just want you
to have a workout.
So as you're going through it,
sometimes you need a 20-minute
where you can just jump on the rowing machine
and away you go and that's great.
You can do this as a running workout,
a cycling workout, a rowing workout,
whatever you need,
use this and just get it done.
If you have more than 20 minutes, great, do it twice.
That's 40 minutes.
Do it three times.
That's 60.
And of course, you're gonna need more workouts
as you get through the holiday season
so hit that Subscribe button
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whenever we come out with new videos
and then check out this playlist
on our best workouts from 2019.