04
WEEKS OF PUMPING
IRON TO AVOID AN
OFFICE BURNOUT
LIFT YOUR MENTAL
ENERGY AND TAKE
A LOAD OFF AT WORKW
ith festive fun but a blurred
memory and summer
holidays not even on the
horizon, long days at work
in these most gloomy of months
can weigh heavy on your mind. You
don’t need to be told that a good
workout can help. Unfortunately,
when office deadlines catch up
with you, early starts, late finishes
and absent lunchbreaks leave
scant time for anything else.
Making space in your schedule for
the gym can seem hard to justify.training increased participants’
sense of personal accomplishment.
Crucially, the half-hour workouts
were performed at high intensity –
a ‘low-impact’ stretching session
while you keep one eye on your
email notifications this is not. Swap
out time-sapping isolation moves
in favour of full-body circuits, and
trade ambles around the local park
for 5K time trials. You can consider
your risk of workplace burnout well
and truly doused. Go hard, go back
to work for a while, then go home.But if you really want to shift that
pile of paper and feel better about
your 9-5, a quick training session
has now officially been signed off.
Psychologists at the University
of New England in Australia found
that both strength training and
cardio negate the impact of stress
due to overwork. In their studies,
researchers asked volunteers to
train three times a week for 28 days,
with sessions lasting 30 minutes.
They found that cardio reduced
emotional exhaustion while weightTIME
WORDS BY MICHAEL JENNINGS / PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOBE LAWRENSON & PETER CROWTHERMAXIMISING LIFE’S GREATEST LUXURY