ForexSpirit

Just how important is your physical health to you? Do you see it as a vital component of your trading success?

There are many facets to what makes up a successful trader. Aspiring traders love to focus on such things as trading systems, technical indicators and money management.

Eventually our aspiring trader even begins to tackle the psychological part of trading. He looks to uproot the self-sabotage and other undesirable traits that cloud his judgement and prevent him from reaching his full trading potential.

One area that rarely gets examined is our own bodies. While we can spend an innordinate amount of time training our minds all that there is to know about trading, it is all too often that we exclude our own physical well-being from the equation.

Trading does not require much physical exertion. As we sit slouched in our chair staring at a computer monitor we’re not going to be burning too many calories.

Being stuck in front of a computer takes up a large part of my normal weekday. It’s hard to program software if you’re not sat in a chair, eyes glued on the monitor, typing away at a keyboard.

With the return of spring (I’m quite content to enjoy the wind and rain as much as any sunshine we may get), I have been able to return to playing football (soccer) on a weekly basis with some friends. Since I did pretty much zero exercise over the winter months I am pretty out of shape.

While playing football gets me fit again over the course of a few weeks of playing, this year I’ve decided to push to have a full exercise regime that I can follow all year round.

To this end, I signed up to a gym last Friday and have had two workouts since.

The last time I was a gym member was in the last century, 1999 to be exact. I’ve never been a big fan of having to go to a gym to exercise. I’ve always found playing team sports to be much more fun and rewarding.

What has changed my mind now can be attributed to two factors. The first is that the only real team sport I play is football, and since we play outdoors it limits when we can play to times when the weather is agreeable and we have the daylight to play in the evenings. Four foot of snow and it being pitch black by 5pm during the winter months rules out any chance we have of playing then.

Secondly, I have come across an exercise program that can be done in a short amount of time as well as making a lot of sense to me.

The workout is neither cardio, aerobics or weight training. It goes by the acronym PACE, which stands for Progressively Accelerating Cardiopulmonary Exertion, and has been developed by Al Sears, M.D.

Cardiopulmonary means that it works your heart and lungs.

It is a progressively accelerating workout in that you slowly adapt and change your workout routine. This prevents the workout from being the same one time after time, so you don’t become bored with what you are doing. It also means that you change your workout to adapt to your increased fitness. You want to make sure the workout is a constant challenge, instead of becoming monotonous.

My exercise routine is limited to no more than twenty minutes. You do not want to go beyond the twenty minute threshold as any exercise beyond that sends the wrong signals to your body on what you are trying to achieve.

During the first few minutes of exercise you burn what is called ATP. This is the most readily available source of energy that your body can use. After using up all the available ATP, your body switches to using carbs stored in muscle tissue. Eventually this runs out too at around the 15-20 minute mark. Your body now moves on to using fat to generate more energy.

Most people think that you need to get to this twenty minute mark so that you can start burning fat to get rid of it. What you need to keep in mind is that your body is an adaptable organism. It will change to the circumstances it finds itself experiencing.

If you burn fat each and every time that you exercise your body will get the message that you are looking to burn fat. So what will your body do? Generate more fat so that you have it ready to burn the next time you exercise! You have generated a vicious cycle where your body is counter-acting the very thing that you are trying to accomplish.

If instead you exercised for less than twenty minutes you would just burn carbs. Your body would then get the message that you need more carbs to burn for your next exercise period. The easiest way for your body to make more carbs is to use your existing fat to produce it. Thus, in the time between your exercise periods your body will convert fat into carbs. This process is often referred to as after burn.

When you look at it this way, it makes perfect sense to limit your exercise workout to no more than twenty minutes. You end up telling your body that you need to have a ready store of carbs for any future exercise you might do, and your body prepares you for this by turning your fat into the necessary carbs!

I’m pretty excited about using this PACE workout. I’m motivated to making it work so I’ll be heading to the gym three times a week to see how long it takes me to make it a habit. Steve Pavlina has a good rule of thumb whereby he tries out something new for 30 days before deciding if it is something he wants to continue doing or not.

I’m therefore initially focused on the first four weeks of my new exercise regime. I’m pretty confident that I’ll experience a noticeable benefit even after such a short time.