Friday 29 July 2016

Laura Motes - The Importance of Exercise for Healthy Living

As a former police officer, Laura Motes is passionate about being healthy and exercising.

Given the number of benefits that even moderate physical exercise brings to our bodies, physical energy, and emotions, it may seem incredible that only a small percentage of our society exercises on a regular basis.

                                       Laura Motes

There is a simple explanation for why this happens. Physical exercise is about experiencing discomfort and getting our bodies out of their comfort zones. The benefits occur only after the discomfort, which makes most people quit before they can actually experience any of the benefits. 

Both strength and cardio training have a paramount influence on energy levels, health, and performance. 

The typical recommended exercise routine for the average adult includes twenty to thirty minutes of continuous exercise three to five days a week. 

In recent years, researchers have been saying that interval training, defined as short periods of intense aerobic activity followed by complete recovery, has profound positive effects, too. 

Interval training has not only physical benefits, but is also a practical reflection of our daily lives. Running up and down the stairs, bicycling, and sprinting are all examples of exercises that rhythmically raise our heart rate.   

There are many studies by scientists and businesses that prove the direct link between physical exercise and performance. 

For example, DuPont claimed a 47.5% reduction in employees skipping work over a six-year period of employee participation in DuPont’s corporate wellness program. DuPont also reported that employees who participated in the wellness program used fourteen percent% less disability days than other workers.  

Laura Motes believes that staying fit and healthy played a tremendous role in her advancement during her career with the police.

Thursday 21 July 2016

Laura Motes - Healthy Living, Stress, and Recovery


Laura Motes worked as a police officer for twenty-one years and she knows a lot about stress.

Our bodies require stress in order to grow. This is true for physical, mental, and emotional aspects of our lives. Stress needs to be followed by renewal.

Laura Motes
A lot of people think that a healthy life is a stress-free life. This is simply not true. A muscle that does not experience any stress dies very quickly. A muscle that gets no rest breaks very quickly. Growth and health require both stress and recovery.

A healthy life is a life that has a balance of stress and recovery. All great athletes and performers in all areas of life have rituals that help them optimize moving between recovery and stress.

The more effective and precise your recovery rituals, the quicker you can move to high performance.

The bigger the challenge, the more precise the rituals need to be. The Navy is a great example of this. It has rituals so precise and exact that it is able to turn soft and slow teenagers into mission-driven, confident, lean soldiers in about ten weeks. Recruits are forced to build rituals around all areas of their lives. There’s a ritual for how they talk, how they walk, what time they wake up in the morning and go to bed, when they eat, what they eat, and how they act under pressure.

In the same manner you can introduce rituals, stress, and recovery in your life. For example, Laura Motes loves spending time outdoors. It helps her relax and rejuvenate.