Working people have to meet different expectations, which are not easily reconcilable. Often it is the own body that suffers from this. The danger: That you yourself fall by the wayside.
Worn-out from your job – and then even train?
I beg your pardon? You want me to work out in a gym or at home in the cellar? Are you kidding me? I work hard all day and I’m supposed to torture myself? I don’t think so.
This or something similar could be the thinking behind it. And it doesn’t really matter whether you are exhausted and worn out at the end of the day from physical or mental work. The fact remains: you are completely exhausted.
Working people today: Burnout as a danger?
The concept of burnout seems to divide the population: There are those who think it’s nothing but moaning, and those affected should pull themselves together a bit. And then there are those who are convinced that it is a serious disease in our time. Whatever the case may be, the demonstrable increase in overwork related health problems seems to be closely related to working conditions.
One thing, however, can also be observed: A stress situation becomes really critical when you stand with your back to the wall and see no possibility to improve the situation yourself. This feeling of being at the mercy of others seems to play an important role in whether or not the person affected can cope with a situation.
Active prevention through exercise
This brings us back to prehistoric man, which, genetically speaking, we still are: In his world back then, there were no customers, no bosses, no computers. What did exist, however, were predators. And when they crossed his path, suddenly there was a lot of stress: Then it was time to protect one’s life by fighting or fleeing. Those who faced such situations with cheerful ease were probably sieved out by evolution and are therefore rather not our ancestors.
But what is it, fight or flight? It’s one thing above all else: movement. And not just a little bit, but really intense. Because that’s what they were there for, the stress hormones: to give everything – right now, because otherwise there was no tomorrow.
But let’s get back to our present times: When we are under stress at work, in many cases exercise is exactly what we least want to do at the moment. But it would have so many benefits: Stress hormones are broken down by it – and increased blood flow to the brain also has its advantages. By the way, an intensive workout that requires you to concentrate on the loads you are moving also rinses your head of tormenting thoughts that often go round and round for hours after work, making relaxation almost impossible. Often the grip to small helpers from the pharmacy seems to be the last possibility.
A healthy mind in a healthy body
After all, happiness is not the absence of unhappiness, but a subjectively successful handling of life’s ups and downs. And so it is not the stress situations themselves that make life hell for us, but the lack of balance or even the fact that it no longer takes place.
It can be assumed that a person’s mental state is very closely linked to his or her physical sensations. And so it is not irrelevant whether one simply accepts one-sidedness in the long run – or whether one does something about it regularly. And that, although it takes time and effort to overcome them again and again.
Better to work harder?
But now one could also ask: Why try to cope better with the stress of the job? So that in the end the demands of working life can be raised even higher? Because one has apparently managed to deal with it better?
Granted: such considerations are probably not entirely far-fetched. In many countries around the world, a neoliberal approach seems to have triumphed over humanity – but that is another story.
Special focus: efficiency in training
But one important thing remains to be mentioned in conclusion: Especially for the training of working people it can be helpful to consciously make the workout efficient. As there is not much time available, it can be tried to place very specific and effective training stimuli within the framework of the shortest possible units – and then quickly initiate the build-up phase. This means: Get out of the gym and give the hard-worked muscles the rest they need now. In this way, there is a good chance that the benefits of the build-up training will outweigh the current inconvenience in the long term.
