Can Getting Sweaty With The Team Help Your Business?
We’ve all been there; the scheduled team meeting time has rumbled around, and you’ve begrudgingly left your work to shuffle into board room, possibly clutching your caffeine fix of choice. Some half-decent ideas are being half-heartedly thrown around, but no one seems to be on game, and your mind has already wandered to the footy scores.
In theory, team meetings should be the best time to pool the collective brainpower of your team and come up with new solutions- the reality, though, is that they can be sluggish affairs that waste time, and achieve little.
However, there is scientific evidence that a quick, 10 minute workout can immediately boost our brain’s higher order mental functioning, which, when used correctly, could actually help us to supercharge our meeting time.
One study found that both 10 or 30 minute bouts of aerobic exercise (which increases heart rate, like running) or resistance exercise (which focuses on muscle strengthening, like push-ups) increased older adults’ scores on a complex mental task. There was no difference between these higher scores even if participants had worked out for 30 minutes, instead of 10.
Another study wanted to find out if young adults show better scores on a task requiring high levels of mental functioning after just 10 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity aerobic exercise, as opposed to 20 minutes or more, which had been found previously. And that’s indeed what they found! The researchers proposed that the increased task performance was due to heightened levels of attention following the exercise.
What does this mean for you and your business? Well, it means that spending just 10 minutes pre-meeting getting your heart rate up could bring higher levels of attention and mental functioning to your team meetings, getting the most out of your and your team’s time and brainpower.
We spoke to CoWork Me community member, Skye Boyland, of Skyetrain personal training, who took us through the perfect workout. Check it out below, and let Skye show you how to perform every move step-by-step in the office.
Perform 3 rounds:
30 seconds Star Jumps
10 X Push Ups
20 X Alternating Lunges
10 X Bodyweight Heaves15 X Squats
30 second plank
Encourage everyone to work to whatever level they’re comfortable with, as we all have different strengths and fitness backgrounds. By keeping it casual and inclusive, working out together can also be a great team bonding exercise, which creates positive work environment both in meetings and out.
