The most important factor in a successful exercise program is to exercise first thing in the morning… every morning! Some mornings, you may just be able to fit in a 10 minute walk, but it’s important to try to do something every morning.

So why mornings?…

· Over 90% of people who exercise consistently,
exercise in the morning.

· When you exercise early in the morning, it “jump
starts” your metabolism and keeps it elevated for hours.

· When you exercise in the morning you’ll be energized for
the day.

· Many people find that morning exercise
“regulates” their appetite for the day. They are not as hungry and they make better food choices. Several people say it puts them in a “healthy mindset.”

· If you exercise at about the same time every morning and
ideally wake-up at about the same time on a regular basis, your body’s endocrine system and circadian rhythms adjust. A couple of hours before you awaken, your body begins to prepare for waking and exercise because it “knows” it is about to happen.

o It is MUCH easier to wake-up. When you wake-up at different times everyday, it confuses your body and thus it’s never really “prepared” to awaken.

o Your metabolism and all the hormones involved in activity and exercise begin to elevate while you are sleeping. Thus, you feel more alert, energized, and ready to exercise when you do wake-up.

o Hormones prepare your body for exercise by regulating blood pressure, heart rate, blood flow to muscles, etc.

· For many people, that appointed time every morning becomes something they look forward to. Many find that it’s a great time to think clearly, pray, plan their day, or just relax mentally.

· Research has demonstrated that exercise increases mental acuity and it lasts four to ten hours after exercise.

· Exercise first thing in the morning is really the only way to assure that something else will not crowd exercise out of your schedule.

• If finding time to exercise is difficult, anyone can get up 30 to 60 minutes earlier to exercise (if it’s a priority in your life). If necessary, you can go to sleep a little earlier. Also, research has demonstrated that people who exercise on a regular basis have a higher quality of sleep and thus require less sleep!

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You make appointment for everyone else all day long, make one for yourself.

Come in and try out a few classes on us. We’re sure that you’ll find out the only way to train is not by yourself, but with a group (read: family) of people who will keep you accountable and who are dedicated to you getting results.

How many New Years Resolutions have you set and forgot about because you didn’t share it with anyone? This is your chance to make 2010 the most successful year of your life.

TEACHERS! You can train for FREE in January and February of 2010. No strings attached. We hope that you’ll stick with us after that, but you have 2 full months of training ON US. This is just a big fat THANK YOU from us for everything that you do for our community. You are appreciated and we want to include you in the positive things that are going on here in our school.

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WHO: …well, YOU! and everyone else at Leadership Academy and others in the community will be teaming up with “Charter For Compassion” to perform Acts of Compassion for the Holidays.

WHEN: The entire month of December. WHERE: Anywhere Compassion is needed.

WHAT: We will complete and record 100-500 Acts of Compassion to help spread good to our community. Your contribution could be the smallest acts of compassion to much larger ones. (These can also count toward your belt rank requirements)

YOUR role in this project is SIMPLE – you will be responsible for 1-5 acts, that’s it! Together, we can do incredible things and SMALL things ADD up to be BIG things!

HOW: Well this is really easy too, everything will be tracked on our school’s community website. If you haven’t signed up here yet be sure to do so. You can sign up at www.LeadershipAcademyMartialArts.ning.com and click on SIGN UP. Once you are a member of the site, you’ll see “ GROUPS” under “MEMBERS” on the left hand column towards the bottom – the GROUP you are looking for is called “Acts of Compassion For The Holidays Project” – there will be more instruction there for you.

BONUS: Really want to make a stand as a Leadership student? I’ve partnered up with “Charter for Compassion” to help reach a larger number of people for the holidays. YOU can inspire others by recording your Acts of Compassion on there website. THIS is the extra step that most aren’t willing to do but is a sign of your true leadership that you’ve learned through be a member of our school.

Their website is http://charterforcompassion.org/act

You can learn more about them and sign up on their site.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP!

We can really make our community buzz from these acts of compassion, what a great feeling to stand up and
demonstrate our leadership in such a positive way!

~Mr. Engels

PS. Brian Williams from www.ThinkKindness.org and SoulsForSouls will be coming here on January 25th for a week to train at our school! Also, he’ll be challenging all of the local schools to a Kindness Challenge – Let’s lead by example and show him what we can do!

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CHALLENGE

We have around 100 Students who train in our martial arts school.

If every student completes just 5 Acts of Compassion in our community, we’ll have completed 500 AOK for the holidays

Add Your AOK To Comments Section HERE! Can you do 10-50 each!?

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212.LAB from Gary Engels on Vimeo.

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At TEDxUSC, David Logan talks about the five kinds of tribes that humans naturally form — in schools, workplaces, even the driver’s license bureau. By understanding our shared tribal tendencies, we can help lead each other to become better individuals.

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Gary Engels is an Extraordinary Student and Teacher of the Martial Arts.

He’s one of those rare individuals who takes action, who follows through on ideas, and who isn’t afraid to proceed, even when “how to proceed” is uncertain. The video above features Gary praising his students for successfully documenting their first 100 community projects.

This is, as far as I know, the very first martial arts school in the world that has purposely set out to achieve 100 community-based projects –and documented their efforts.

This effort came about due to a single conversation Gary and I had several years ago. I explained a concept I had envisioned for teaching young people authentic leadership programs in martial arts schools. I called the idea, “Project-Based Leadership Training.” Gary, like many of us in the martial arts “industry,” were concerned about the trend among unscrupulous and/or inexperienced teachers/school owners to market leadership training courses without any genuine, practical, or intelligently conceived curriculum to do so.

Gary asked me if he could take the ideas we had discussed and experiment with them. As a result, Gary conceived and designed http://www.leadershipstudents.com.

Gary’s school, appropriately called LEADERSHIP ACADEMY, may be seen here.

Congratulations to Gary and Nikki Engels –and to their students – for achieving 100 documented projects. Gary has not only deeply affected the thinking, goals, and abilities of his students (and I would say, his entire community), but he has left a trail for the international martial arts community to follow.

It’s our collective goal that 1000’s of martial arts schools adopt this simple and intelligent approach to teaching young people how to be leaders, by doing things that actually require them to practice leadership skills.

We hope this idea weaves itself into the fabric of martial arts education –and that someday the martial arts world will have documented hundreds of thousands of projects that take the martial arts “out of the dojo and into the world.”

If you know of any teacher or school owner like Gary Engels, would you be so kind as to point them my way. —Tom Callos

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100 Projects – Our Project Portfolio from Gary Engels on Vimeo.

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MastersJOURNEY “Unpacked” from Gary Engels on Vimeo.

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