There’s a couple of them at every office. You know the ones I’m talking about. Those friends and colleagues of ours who seem to be perpetually energized, always active, always in a good mood, without ever needing a cup of coffee or a shot of caffeine to keep them going.

Maybe you’re one of those people yourself!

Now, we’re not here to knock coffee. There are some genuine benefits to coffee and we can certainly attest that it’s helped us through more than a few difficult mornings.

Nor do we have anything against all you energized types out there. That’s more power to you (even if we’re a little jealous…)

What we’re really interested in today is how people stay energized day-in-and-day-out without needing coffee or pick me ups. Surprisingly, most of the people we’ve spoken to about this recently all had the same answer:

Drink lots of water.

What are the Actual Health Benefits of Water?

Water has tons of widely-known health benefits that you’ve probably heard about before:

• It boosts your immune system;
• Helps manage your body weight;
• It’s great for your skin;
• Helps your body flush waste;
• It delivers oxygen throughout your body.

Drinking water (that is not soda, juice, or anything flavored) is really the drink of choice for our bodies. However, how often has “getting you energized” been one of the first benefits that comes to mind?

The reason we might not readily pair the two is because – even if we all know it – we don’t often think about the role water plays in fighting dehydration.

Society as a whole has probably paired getting dehydrated with athletes or people wandering through the desert, but that’s hardly the case. Most of us get dehydrated on a daily basis even when sitting indoors on a cool day behind our desks simply because we don’t drink enough water.

But you might say “I always drink water when I feel really thirst!” And that’s part of the problem.

The mechanism for thirst lags behind our actual level of dehydration. By the time you feel even a little bit thirsty, you’re already dehydrated.

Why does this matter so much? Well, studies have shown that being even as little as 1% dehydrated can negatively impact our moods, attention span, memory and motor coordination.

When you stop and think about it, all those detriments that water prevents are directly related to our performance at the office. They’re the things that office workers have to worry about even more than athletes.

So maybe when we’re listing the benefits of water, the ones we might want to keep in mind are:

• Water helps keep us focused. Drinking water right before a meeting can ensure we stay on target and get the most out of it.
• Water picks us up when we’re feeling sluggish. For instance, 16 oz of water can be as energizing as 8 oz of coffee during that afternoon slump.
• Water helps us ward off hunger and stop us from being “hangry.” If we’re pressed for time and have to postpone lunch, a full cup of water can delay our hunger by as much as 30 minutes.
• Drinking water works great in conjunction with office Wods! There’s nothing like the 2-for-1 boost of water and a light workout to pick us up when we need it!

If you’re having a hard time visualizing what 8 or 16 oz looks like, remember that 8 oz is about your average coffee mug. And for all you metric folks out there, 8 oz is about 236 ml, and 16 oz is 472 ml (which is just shy of a mason jar).

Your Water Challenge for this Week

As before, we’re not simply here to list off some benefits, but we’re gonna couple these benefits with some down to earth actions you can take at the office.

The challenge this week is to drink more water, and to help you accomplish it, we’ll set some rules:

• You have to drink an extra 8-16 oz of water twice a day for one week straight.
• You have to drink this water in one go. Either chug or sip it quickly, but don’t return to your projects until it’s done.
• You have to do it at the same times each day. Optimally, we’d recommend doing this once in the mornings, say before a meeting, and once in the afternoon after you start to slow down.
• If possible, make it social! Get together as a team, grab your mugs and chug. Just remember it doesn’t have to be a race (unless you want it to).

If you follow this challenge for the whole week, we’re confident that you’ll start noticing the benefits.

Of course, you might feel a little uneasy about drinking all this extra water, but look on the bright side: you’ll be getting some extra steps every time you need to head down the hall to the restroom.

Pro-Tip: Get yourself a good water bottle or jug that you can keep on your desk and always have at hand. Being able to sit back and sip water throughout the day is always more efficient for hydration than having to get up and head down to the water cooler every time.Of course, once you’re empty, don’t forget to go and refill it and get those steps in!

If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to buying a reliable bottle, there are tons of options. We’re really lucky to live in an age where there are good, eco-friendly and safe bottles available.

Consider some of these materials:

• Stainless steel. It’s usually expensive (often $40 and upwards) but as a material it doesn’t need a lining, nor do any chemical leach from the material into your drinking water.
• Aluminum. These are often cheaper alternatives to stainless steel, but they’re typically lined with an epoxy or enamel interior. If you go aluminum, just makes sure to check if the lining is BPA-free.
• Glass. Glass-bottles are often some of the most expensive (and fragile), but there’s virtually no chance of BPA or other harmful chemicals getting into your drinking water. If you go glass, be sure to get a protective sleeve for it. That way you’ll get some extra mileage out of your purchase.

Bonus Challenge!

During the same week, drink an extra 8-16 oz of water as soon as you wake up (but after you brush your teeth). If you’re a mid-level coffee drinker (that is, you enjoy the caffeine but don’t need it), see if it gives you a similar boost when trying to wake up. You might be surprised.

The Summary

In sum, drinking lots of water has benefits that directly impact our work life at the office. If you follow through with this challenge and feel the benefits, don’t stop at one week! Make it a regular habit and your body and co-workers too will thank you.

If you’re looking for other great ways to stay energized at the office, be sure to check out our Top 3 Office Wods guide, or to look into our Fit Company Challenge.

Yours in wellness,

The FC Squad

It happens to us all. Those lurches we feel while we’re at the office. Maybe we start feeling a little slow in the afternoon after lunch break. Maybe the stress gets to us and we can’t seem to put two and two together. Or maybe our eyes feel like they’re going to fall out if we look at our screen one moment longer. Fortunately, there’s an easy way of overcoming the sluggishness.

Office WODs (Workouts of the day) are tiny workouts that we can perform a couple times a day at the office. We don’t need to change our shoes, put on some shorts, or get mentally prepped like we might before hitting the gym. All we need are a couple minutes, a few coworkers, and a desire to have fun.

Overall, Wods are are great for your health and your productivity. They destress you, improve your energy and focus, and compel you in positive, affirming ways. Often, all you need to wrap your head around a problem or give yourself that jolt to carry on until 5:00PM is a little workout to get your energy back up.

Also, what might not be obvious at first glance is how micro decisions you make over the course of your day can snowball into bigger changes. For instance, maybe one day you’ll go for a walk during lunch instead of flipping through Facebook. And maybe later that evening, you’ll feel like hitting the gym instead of binging most of that new Netflix show in one sitting.

Anyone can perform Wods solo, but for the best results, we recommend trying to do these with coworkers. There’s nothing wrong going at it solo, especially when everyone else might be busy or in the middle of the something, but it’s honestly more fun when you’re in a group. Plus these little breaks offer great ways to bond with your colleagues and be social at the office.

At Fit Company, we aim to take a Wod break every hour when possible. Of course, that said, we often end up missing a couple of opportunities. But when we managed to hit them all, we really feel the difference by the end of the day. We get more done, feel more creative and often more energized even after a long day.

One way we’ve found that helps keep us regular with the workouts, is setting a timer either on your desktop, in your browser or on your phone to ring every hour. When the buzzer sounds, it’s time to drop everything and take your Wod break.

When you’re on your break, it’s important that you completely detach. Try to walk away from your screens or shut them down if you’re still at your desk. Put some distance with whatever project you were working on and focus on yourself. Ideally, move into another part of the office or out in the stairwell or hallway.

Now, don’t get disheartened if fitting in a Wod break every hour seems like an insurmountable commitment. Start small, maybe 2-3 per day, or even just 1 if that’s all you can manage. You’ll discover that once you get started, adding more to your routine will become second nature. Heck, you’ll even find ways to start strategically inserting them into your days (there’s nothing like starting a meeting one minute early by kicking it off with a quick Wod)!

Here are our top 3 favorite office Wods (in no particular order):

1) Stretching WODs

Stretching is perfect for when you’re feeling stressed, under pressure or if you’ve been sitting down for too long and are starting to feel cramped. These kinds of workouts are great for doing solo and can also be fun with the team (provided you have the space for a whole bunch of people at once).

We recommend holding 30 seconds of triangle pose on each side. Follow up with 3 sun salutations and you’re set!

If you’re pretty athletic, you can also toss in one more stretch that focuses on your hamstrings or other muscles that might need to be loosened up and relaxed.

Small stretches throughout the day are good as well, and don’t have to be part of your Wod breaks. For instance, locking your fingers together and stretching your arms above your head can feel great after you’ve been typing for hours.

2) Physical WODs

These are great for those moments when you need a little “pick me up”, an energy boost, or if you’re feeling sluggish after a heavy lunch (though, ideally, do these at least an hour after you eat).

Our favorite physical WOD takes a grand total of 1 minute to complete: 30 seconds of push ups and 30 seconds of air squats. Simple!

The combination of these two is sure to get your heart pumping, your body energized, and your mind ready to break through all barriers.

Feel free to vary up the exercises depending on your fitness level too! Pushups can involve your chair, knees, walls or be full-blown, while squats can be done at your desk while standing up and sitting down on your chair.

If people are brand new at the Office WOD, try to stick to basic exercises. Keep them simple, fun and basic. Otherwise, if you get too technical, you might scare away the newcomers and no one wants that.

3) Static Hold WOD

These kinds of WODs are definitely some of the most widespread and common at offices, and they work great with a team! All you have to do is fine some place where everyone can gather around and hold a position for 30 seconds.

The two best holds are the plank and the wall sit. Don’t focus on doing both – just stick to one and see if your team can reach that first 30 second benchmark.

After you’ve done it a couple times, slowly see if you can move up the mark to 1 minute, and then beyond. Holding for 30 seconds or more might seem impossible the first time around, but you’ll be amazed at how fast everyone progresses when they make it a regular workout!

BONUS: Mindfulness Wod

This type of Wod is definitely the least physically demanding, but often the most challenging. All you need to do this time around is focus, and still your mind, but that’s often easier said than done.

We usually try to get one or two of these into our routine every day, especially when we’re under pressure and our minds are racing a mile a minute.

All you have to do is sit down and meditate for 2-3 minutes. This means, letting your mind be still, let your thoughts pass you by, and just sit there in silence without judging yourself or anything around you. It’s only natural that thoughts will flood back into your mind, and when that happens don’t get upset, just let them be and watch them pass you by like little clouds disappearing into the air.

Afterwards, we like taking 10-20 deep breaths, breathing in through our nostrils and breathing out with our mouths. This helps us bring in the calm and push out the stress, giving our bodies a two-for-one shot of mental energy and relaxation.

There you have it: our favorite office Wods. We’re sure that these little breaks will help clear up the mental congestion and help you feel ready to get back to work.

When you’re getting started, remember not to go at it too aggressively. You can start small and always add sessions or workouts as you go along.

If you’re looking for more inspiration, or if office Wods still seem totally new and a little challenging, be sure to check out our 10-day Office Wod challenge. In it, we outline a variety of workouts you can perform at the office, all with the goal of pushing you and your co-workers to keep up the workouts for two work-weeks in a row.

Yours in wellness,

The FC Squad

When you think of a “team meeting”, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Is it a whiteboard? Chairs circling a conference table? Dial-ins from the other office? I suspect most of these ring a bell or two. But how about fresh air, chirping birds, and a little movement? Where do they fit?

We spend most of our time sitting down and in front of a screen at the office, so why not use team meetings as an opportunity for something different? It might seem unconventional and maybe even counter-intuitive, but “walking meetings” are a great way of mixing a healthy activity with the productivity you come to expect from a meeting.

We’ve seen the benefits first hand. At Fit Company, we try to squeeze in a team walking meeting pretty much every week. After most meetings, our team feels refreshed, our minds feel focused, and we come back to the office ready to be productive. It’s been really helpful for our team and we’re hoping you’ll give it a try with your team!

If you’re on the fence about the concept, rest assured that there’s more than a few reasons to consider this type of meeting:

• Walking is an amazing de-stressor. If your team is feeling the pressure of deadlines, taking a few minutes to move around on their own two feet will help ease some of the tension they might be feeling.
• It’s a great opportunity to unplug, even for a few minutes. Getting that break from the screens gives your mind a chance to clear up and organize all those thoughts.
• Physical momentum equals mental momentum. You might find your best ideas come when walking! We often do.
• Changing your environment often changes your way of thinking about a problem. If your team’s been hitting a wall all morning, walking while continuing the topic may help your team make a breakthrough.
• Walking increases your blood flow, which in turn leads to better energy and ideas (and sometimes even more rapid ideas, too).
• Sunlight gives you Vitamin D! This often ignored vitamin gives our immune system a boost and is essential for overall health.
• It’s energizing and FUN! When you return to the office, your team will feel revitalized and ready to work.

Did we win you over yet? I hope so, because it’s not hard to get a meeting like this going. Just keep a few of the following in mind when getting started:

• Find the right time of day. We recommend mid-morning or mid-afternoon walking meetings to help break up the routine and screen time.
• Pick a subject you can cover without needing a computer. Brainstorming sessions are amazing when you’re walking, but finalizing a slide deck might be better left for the conference room.
• Make the meeting intentional. Write 1-3 objectives down (preferably on paper) before the meeting begins and make sure you hit those on your walk.
  • This is doubly important for the first few meetings, since team members might get distracted if things don’t seem too formal. Just remember why you’re there and keep the focus on getting things done.
• Bring something to record the meeting. Using your phone to record the audio is great, since you can listen to the file again later. Be sure to summarize the big points and breakthroughs before the end of the recording.
  • Of course, if you’d rather stay unplugged and avoid the phone distractions, have someone bring a notepad and pen along.
• Find the right path. Avoid busy intersections and commercial streets during peak hours. If there’s a park nearby with some greenery, give that a shot.
  • One secret: if you have a huge office or a parking garage, these make great alternatives for the outdoors if the weather is poor or if not everyone is dressed to go for a walk. We’ve personally used our covered parking area more than a few times for this.

And that’s it! So, your challenge for this week: put together one walking meeting with your team. Pick something light to begin with, get a couple of co-workers together, and get to stepping! Once it’s over, take stock and see how everyone feels. You might be amazed at the results.

Bonus challenge? If you find yourself doing a lot of remote work or taking conference calls, see if you can take it while on a walk. We do it all the time and it definitely helps keep us focused and energized.

We hope you take up at least one of the challenges! If you do, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter to tell us how it goes. If you have any comments, feedback or tips of your own, we’d love to hear from you.

The FC Squad

Planning and implementing wellness initiatives for your company can initially seem like a lot of work. There’s recruitment for the event, logistics to work out, people to get motivated, and a whole lot of monitoring along the way.

If you’re finding yourself at the initial planning stages for a wellness challenge and it’s feeling more daunting than you realized: sit back, breath and don’t worry. Countless other program leaders like yourself have been in the same place before you and now have incredible success stories.

With that in mind, one of the best starting places is to look at other wellness programs and learn from them. Seeing how their programs were ran, you’ll be able to recognize which routes lead to success and which pitfalls you’ll want to avoid along the way.

To kick-start our discussion, we’d like to turn to a recent episode of NBC’s Superstore that involved a company-wide wellness “step challenge”.

For those of you not familiar with the show, Superstore is a situational comedy set inside a fictional big-box department store. The store is not exactly presented as an ideal work environment, and as a result, most of the employees have become apathetic and unmotivated.

In season 4, episode 11, a good idea is introduced – one that looks like it might boost team spirit around the store. Glenn, the store manager, signed their location up for a one-week, company-wide step challenge. According to the rules of the challenge, each store would be working together, their combined steps going into a live tally. At the end of the week, the winning store would receive the awesome prize of… having lunch with one of the company executives.

Well, the incentive (lunch with a company exec) turned out to be not quite the best motivation to get employees moving. No one really cared about the prize and to make matters worse, Glenn, who promised he would lead by example, suffers an injury while announcing the challenge and is unable to help the team gain steps.

Just when the challenge seemed dead in the water, Amy and Dina, a pair of career-oriented employees took it upon themselves to get the store moving. The common ground they used to incentivize their team? Orchestrate a rivalry with another store.

The incentive worked in rallying their team, but the results were disastrous. Like most situational comedies, the events in the episode spiraled hilariously out of control. Employees got too competitive and tribal and the episode ended with both stores being vandalized and ransacked. Not exactly what one would call a resounding success.

Ultimately, the step challenge, while a good idea in theory, turned out to be somewhat of a disaster in practice. While they did manage to get their employees to bond together, it was for the wrong reasons and with worse results.

So why are we bringing this up this episode in our discussion today? Well, for starters, any show or movie talking about wellness always perks our interest (surprise! it’s what we do). But on a more serious note, it’s interesting how the writers of this episode clearly know a few things about company wellness programs, as well as the right ways to flip them upside down and make them comical for the viewers.

Obviously, we don’t endorse ransacking anyone’s office as the end result of any program (who would!?), but there’s a few takeaways here for companies running or looking to run their own wellness programs, whether they be step challenges or any other events.

1. First up, make your event team-focused. Step challenges are often solitary endeavours that involve competing against yourself or other pre-set goals. Having a challenge where the entire team works together towards a common goal goal is an awesome way to get people talking and working together.

Ask yourself if your current direction will lead to employees going in the same direction, or each branching off pursuing their own goals. Any event that puts the emphasis on the team first should ideally be your first pick.

2. Second, go easy on the rivalry. On the surface, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a little interoffice or inter-company rivalry. Some people are naturally competitive and enjoy matching up their results against those of their peers. However, any time rivalry is in play, the main takeaway is to keep it friendly. If your company is working against another, put an emphasis on having fun and good sportsmanship. This should help curb any negative behavior. Who knows, maybe they’ll meet again at the next year’s event and remember that initial meeting.

3. Third, focus on the motivation BEFORE organizing the event. The main issue the store was tackling in the show was a lack of motivation – which didn’t exactly improve even after they launched the challenge. The employees didn’t feel like a team and the weak incentive wasn’t the kind of prize to get them moving forward of their own volition.

Now, that’s not to say a company lunch with an executive is a bad prize for participants – only that it wasn’t a good idea for THIS group. Every team is different, and it’s key to understanding what motivates, pushes and gets them moving before putting together the event.

In cases where employee morale is low, a strong incentive might be needed to get people involved. Where in others, when everyone already likes working together, you might only need a little push to get them involved. Once you know what drives them, you simply need to pitch it to your team.

4. Fourth, work with multiple leaders and leadership styles. As the show revealed, having a single figure at the head of a challenge can go downhill if that person has to back out or if their leadership doesn’t get people moving.

It’s worth bearing in mind, that different people respond better to different kinds of leadership. If you have super competitive, athletic types in your team, they will likely benefit the most from a leader who is equally competitive and ready to push them. On the other hand, for the employees that like to bond and have a good time, they might only need someone who is fun, energetic and knows how to lift up the team spirit.

A final important takeaway is that there is rarely a one-size-fits all model for every team and every wellness event and challenge. Every team is different, and even the same type of wellness event might need to be tweaked just a little bit to fit your office.

In conclusion, it’s interesting that even sitcoms sometimes have insightful things to say about wellness programs. If you’ve been part of a step challenge or have one coming up, we recommend you can catch that episode from Superstore. It’s definitely not what you want a wellness program to become, but there’s enough in there that anyone who’s participated in one should be able to get a kick out of it. Sometimes it’s good to sit back and laugh a little, even if it’s about the same kinds of projects we’re working on.

Yours in Wellness,
The FC Squad