Walking at Sunrise

The days are longer, the mornings are lighter, and the weather is warmer. Now is the perfect opportunity to start a new early-morning exercise habit!

You might be wondering about the significance of exercising in the morning. Surely being active at any time of day is the goal?

And you’re right, it is! But particular benefits come with early morning exercise.

Keep reading to find out more!

You start your day with a win

Early morning exercise is one of the easiest ways to nab a quick win to start your day.

Let’s be honest – how often do you tell yourself that you will get a walk or workout in later in the day...but it just doesn’t happen?

So much of the time, life gets in the way. Eat the frog early.

By ticking a task off your to-do list so soon after waking up, you will feel the positive ripple effects of your accomplishment throughout your day.

You will be more productive

You’re probably well aware that exercise is a serious brain booster. Here are just a few of the incredible advantages exercise brings you:

• Improved mental clarity

• Better attention span

• More energy and focus

• Better short-term memory

How much of a difference could all of these benefits could make to your day if you could experience them early?

You’ll find yourself whizzing through tasks and might even avoid the much-dreaded afternoon slump.

So quit starting your day by hitting snooze and then scrolling through screens. Allow yourself to be fully present instead with some activity, as gentle or vigorous as you like.

Your brain will thank you for it!

Boost your mood

It’s time to bust a myth: You don’t need to join the 5 am club or spend hours working out to feel the benefits of early morning exercise.

Not if you don’t want to, that is!

Any amount of exercise – long or short – will help to release endorphins and serotonin throughout your body. These help you to feel happy and confident, rather than exhausted and stressed. What better way could there be to start your day?

Even fifteen minutes of walking around the block can help you feel good for hours afterwards.

Better Sleep

Early morning exercise – specifically outside – kick-starts your circadian rhythm. Everyone has a circadian rhythm wired in their body and controlled by the brain. It is incredibly sensitive to light – so if you get out early in the morning, your body knows it is time to get going for the day.

(You can find out more about your Circadian Rhythm – and the amazing effects walking can have on it – in this blog.)

Exercising in the morning helps ensure melatonin will be released at the right time – when it gets dark – and you’ll be able to get a great night’s sleep.

Just keep in mind that if you’re rising a bit earlier to get some morning activity in, you’ll probably need to hit the hay earlier too.

A Natural Glow

Exercise at any time of day gets your heart beating faster, which pumps more blood around the body. This helps oxygen flow into your cells, which can make your skin a little brighter.

So, want to look like you’ve just had a facial? Get your body moving in the morning and enjoy an all-day glow!

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Hopefully, this blog has helped you understand some of the many benefits of early morning exercise.

If you would like to make early activity a regular part of your routine but need some help getting the habit established, I would love to help.

At Club Synergy, our 90-minute group sessions are deliberately scheduled to help you to take advantage of how good early morning exercise is for your body, brain, and business!

Our Active Accountability sessions are split in two, allowing you to make an exercise and a work commitment in the company of a supportive and encouraging group. The exercise portion is completed first, so you can take new energy into ticking your business task off your to-do list.

Or if you fancy a longer walk coupled with an in-depth conversation with a fellow business owner, then NETwalking is for you. Taking place on Mondays and Wednesdays, join us to hit your step goal, get to know somebody new, and return to your desk with clarity and inspiration.

You can try out your first session for free here.

When we set new goals for ourselves, no matter what area of life they apply to, it’s very easy to keep them guarded.

The closer we keep them to our chest, the less embarrassed we will be if we don’t achieve them.

But what if I told you that sharing your goals is often the key to success?

There are so many wonderful reasons why sharing your goals is critical – no matter what stage of the journey you are on to complete them.

Keep on reading to find out more!

You can learn from the experience of others

When it comes to sharing your goals, who you decide to tell is just as important as telling someone in the first place!

Always make sure you choose someone supportive who is willing to give you a kick up the backside if you need it.

Oftentimes, telling someone who has already achieved your goal can be a key aspect of your success.

For example, if you set yourself a goal of running a 10k race, tell someone who has already been there and crossed the finish line.

Not only will they be able to support you on the journey, but they will ‘get’ what you are experiencing and be able to offer you helpful advice to keep your progress moving.

At Club Synergy we have a supportive ‘Run4U’ WhatsApp group, where runners of all distances and abilities cheer each other on every single day. Watching people achieve things they didn’t know were possible is a really beautiful thing.

You can celebrate your progress

As human beings, we can be quite funny about success. Sometimes we can get so lost focusing on the end goal, that we forget to recognise our progress in the pursuit.

Other people can recognise our achievements much better than we can.

You might not celebrate milestones if you keep them to yourself. Share them loud and proud so you can be recognised as the superstar you are!

You are accountable to someone else

Accountability is a powerful thing. According to a study by the American Society of Training and Development, people who have an ‘accountability partner’ are 65% more likely to achieve their goal. This statistic then increases to a whopping 95% likelihood when you schedule regular meetings with your accountability partner.

Using that 10k running example again, plan your training in advance and then tell your accountability buddy when you’re going to do it. That way, you will have someone checking up on you to give you what I affectionally call a NAG (Nudge Against Goals).

You’ll be surprised at how effective a tactic it is to get stuff done!

You will overcome blocks more easily

Having people who are invested in your success will help to keep you invested as you work towards a goal. This is especially important when you hit bumps in the road.

When you share your goals with people you trust, you will feel supported enough to admit when things aren’t going to plan. Because your accountability buddy is also committed to your success, they will be able to help you work through issues, answer your questions, and help you create a new game plan if it’s clear the old one isn’t working anymore.

This way, instead of stewing in the negatives, you will have a new vigour and recommitment to hitting your goal the next time the going gets tough.

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Hopefully, this blog has helped you to see how sharing your goals can have a huge impact on achieving them.

Finding the right person to cheer you on is a game-changer. At Club Synergy, we’re fortunate enough to have a whole community of them.

Our Active Accountability sessions are centred around helping you achieve your goals, and I would love you to come along and try one for yourself.

Running every Tuesday and Thursday at 8.30 am, this powerful 90-minute session helps to kick procrastination into touch. Not only will you get some brain-boosting exercise in early, but you will also work on one of those pesky tasks that have been lingering on your to-do list for far too long.

Attending these sessions regularly will help get you into a set routine of prioritising both your well-being and your workload.

The session setup is simple: we touch base in the first ten minutes to state our intentions, then go off and complete the exercise portion for the first forty minutes. After a quick check-in, it’s time to tackle your task.

We all come back together five minutes before the end to share in our successes. And don’t worry if you don’t quite achieve your goals within the session – our ‘Done by One’ policy will make sure it’s wiped out of your diary by lunchtime.

You can book your FREE Active Accountability taster session here.

Following on from last month’s blog about how physical activity sessions benefit your remote team, there’s another subject I would like to spend some time on: building strong relationships when your team work from home.

It’s a tricky thing to do.

When positions are fully remote, it’s hard to find opportunities for spontaneous conversations – the ones that create the closeness and camaraderie that makes teams work seamlessly together.

We’ve all had a few years of trial and error with working from home. Now that it’s here to stay, here are my tips to help managers build relationships within their remote teams.

Speak face to face

Let’s start with the easiest way to build relationships – speak to each other face to face. Instead of relying on phone calls, emails, or Team chats to stay in touch, make surethat you have regular video calls with every member of your team.

As daft as it might sound, video communication will make each person in your team more ‘real’.

Seeing each person’s face on screen helps you to learn their body language and the specifics around how they communicate – which will make you a better manager.

But more than that, putting a face to the name helps your remote team to build an understanding of one another and a sense of togetherness.

You should try and help people feel they are all in the same room, even if you’re scattered across the world.

Create personal engagement opportunities

Make sure you schedule pockets of time during the week that let people step away from work and connect personally.

Virtual coffee breaks are a popular example, although be warned: if you only plan one for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, people may struggle to break away from their duties as it could totally interrupt their flow.

I would suggest arranging longer virtual lunches - perhaps surprising your team by sending some food to their home. Allocating a chunk of time for this shared experience will not only make people feel valued, but it will bond them at the same time.

Encourage 1-2-1 conversations

The most popular sessions we run at Club Synergy are our NETwalks. And I would love you to use our setup to build strong relationships within your remote team.

A NETwalking session should start with a full group catch-up on Zoom before you assign different members of your remote team into breakout rooms in pairs. Then they get their jackets on, put their earphones in, and head outside for a good old chinwag!

If you’re pairing people together for the first time and you want to find a quick way to move past the awkward small talk, try posing a Kickstart Question before your pairs head off on their virtual ‘walk n talk’.

I use this technique in pretty much every NETwalk. Here are a few questions that have been posed recently:

• What was the most rebellious thing you did when you were younger?

• What album or song have you listened to most in your lifetime?

• Who in your life do you wish you had met sooner?

These thought-provoking questions will get people talking about deeper topics,which helps to build relationships much more quickly.

Make sure you plan enough time for each pair to have a proper conversation. Ten or fifteen minutes just won’t cut it. Our NETwalks usually last for an hour, to allow the conversation to develop and change depending on the people partaking in it.

Not only will your remote team get the brain-boosting benefits of fresh air and new energy from getting some steps in, but they will leave the conversation feeling a whole lot closer too.

Facilitate in-person teambuilding

Finally - if you can - try and create opportunities to bring your remote team together in person.

If travel arrangements wouldn’t be too complex, why not host an away day every year?

This way, you can bring your team together to brainstorm about work-related issues, come up with creative new ideas, and push new initiatives forward – plus give people time to have the kind of casual, water cooler conversations that can be so missing from remote working environments.

Hopefully, this blog post has got your brain cogs whirling with plenty of ideas on how to build relationships within your remote team.

If you want to learn more about team-building strategies such as Club Synergy’s NETwalking sessions, book a call with me and we can chat through the detail.

Or why not experience a NETwalk for yourself, to see if it is the right fit for your remote team? Our community of like-minded, enthusiastic, and supportive business owners are ready to help you kick-start your working week with open conversation and time in the great outdoors.

Book your session here. Did I mention your first time is free?