Cumulative Effect

It’s incredible what the cumulative effect of action can have on your mental wellbeing and success in business and life. How is it possible that ten minutes or so of exercise every day can become pleasurable and have a direct impact on your performance in other areas of your life??

It is the cumulative effect of sticking to a daily discipline that changes the way you work. We know the compound effect of interest on our credit card bills and mortgages; this is the same effect, a compound effect of regular daily exercises. Doing your activity also accelerates the process, plus the additional rules of needing to catch-up if you miss a day and no banking keeps us accountable to ourselves for the task at hand. It is still possible to cheat the system because no-one is checking or asking, but why would you when it’s purely a personal challenge, and the benefits are all yours, meaning you would only be cheating yourself.

During lockdown, I set myself a simple challenge – a daily skipping challenge #1000skips. One hundred skips everyday week one – week two that goes up to 200 – to week ten when you hit 1000 skips. This is a daily challenge which means you cannot miss a day!! If you miss a day, you must do double the following day to catch up! By contrast if you get keen and do double on a day, that does not carry over, no banking, you still must do the normal amount the next day!

I then shared this within my community and engaged approximately 50 others in the challenge – all ranging in age, ability, and fitness. Most of us were not and still are not a skipping master or guru, it’s simple, during the challenge a sense of pride developed focused on the fact that I’m not crap, I can do this. I had never done skipping before as a child and now I can; by contrast, some who did know how to skip before had forgotten how to do it and how it could become vaguely pleasurable.

As the number of daily skips grew, I shared some observations and thoughts that might help those taking part. We can all count, however getting distracted, losing count, or just tuning out gets frustrating, was it 42 or 52 skips in a row? Where am I up to now? Count in bite-sized chunks or sets of 20s or 50s that way you only have to do a smaller number of sets, and it’s easier to keep track. Another option for some is to work out how many skips on average you do in a minute; it could be 25, 50, 100 or even more for some, then just do the appropriate number of minutes you need plus a bit extra for good measure!

A priority no matter what age you are is to stretch and warm-up beforehand and then stretch and warm down afterwards, nobody needs or wants any niggles and pulls from this challenge! Another consideration is what time of day is best for you? Some people are 1st thing in the morning, before breakfast to give the day a kick start. Mid-morning when you need an energy boost before lunch. Before eating lunch and shaking out the morning Zoom calls. Mid-afternoon when the siesta feeling beckons and you want to get yourself up and running again. At the end of your days work as part of a fitness programme that you are doing, or Last thing at night because you’ve put it off throughout the day, tried to forget and now realise you don’t want to do 000’s tomorrow!! There isn’t a right or wrong way, whatever works for you, keeping to a semi-regular time slots works best for me – just keep on doing it!

As a new month arrives, what challenges can you take on for the new month? You could complete or start the #1000skips, even if you are travelling a skipping rope is not very large in a suitcase. Why not go for the massive one if skipping is your thing you could take on the #10000skips. It would take just under two years to complete and would involve a ridiculous number of skips – your call.

Skipping is not for everyone; do not worry; there are plenty of other ideas to consider.

One more every week – Chin up challenge – Whatever your maximum is in week one be that 2,3 or 17 the following week, you must do one more than your previous maximum. Set as a ten-week challenge or build it into your natural way of working and target 50 chin-ups in a row?

One Extra every day – Press Ups – One more today than you did yesterday – always going up. Do this for the new month – you might start on 15 – 45 or 100 as your day one maximum. Now everyday increase by one – at the end of each week on day 7,14,21,28 Go for a maximum day, how high can you get to; now set that higher total as your new base for the following week.

The 30-day plank challenge that was around at the start of lockdown.  The challenge is a program to strengthen the core and build up endurance. Each day of the challenge, you’ll gradually increase the amount of time that you hold a plank. At the end of the 30 days, the goal is to hold one for up to 5 minutes at a time.

20 secs – 20 secs – 30 secs – 30 secs – 40 secs – Rest – 45 secs – 45 secs – 1 min – 1 min – 1 min – 1 ½ mins – Rest – 1 ½ mins – 1 ½ mins – 2 mins – 2 mins – 2 ½ mins – Rest – 2 ½ mins – 2 ½ mins – 3 mins – 3 mins – 3 ½ mins – 3 ½ mins – Rest – 4 mins – 4 mins – 4 ½ mins – 5 mins

There are many other challenges that you will have completed, share them and challenge others. It’s great to see what craziness and inspiration we can unlock. Just a spoonful of GRIT – Resilience – Commitment – a daily ritual of hundreds of skips completed without fail every day can make a real difference. Keep those skips going