Farm health series #2: Working out

Shay: And it all comes down to this. 2 on, 2 out, bottom of the 9th. The Farmers lead by 1.

Chris: Full count. Here comes the play at the plate, and it's the Ag View Pitch.

Shay: Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. And I have myself, Shay Foulk, and Chris Barron here today to talk through the next portion of our series, which is working out. How's it going today, Chris?

Chris: It's going good. Getting ready to have a good conversation here before we got to do some push-ups.

Shay: Yeah. Well, I don't know, I hadn't planned on that, but we're practicing social distancing. I don't know if we're 6 feet away here, but I think we're taking the health person into consideration there as well, so. Close enough. You know, we started off this series talking about the sleep and the importance that that has and how it impacts everything else that we do. And I think working out is really a natural progression in the series of farm health, and this is one of the original topics that a listener had reached out to us about. I think so many of us really have this in our mind of what that looks like and the struggles associated with that in agriculture and farming. So I think what you and I kind of wanted to talk about here today is how do we facilitate that working out? What does starting look like? What does it look like in season and during these busy times?

And then just maybe some, some other things associated with that. So maybe you want to start out by talking about just the importance of it and overall big picture here.

Chris: Well, it's ironic right now that we're sitting here worried about social distancing and all the crazy stuff that's going on in the environment with, with the coronavirus. And, you know, you look at how some people have responded to this virus even, and I'll guarantee you there's a direct correlation to people's ability to, to fight off viruses and those kind of things, direct correlation to people who exercise versus people who choose to not exercise regularly. So I'm starting there because that's the thing that's, you know, top of mind for people right now. But I would also say just in general, before we start diving into it, is, you know, and to speak personally to it, I'm not the most, you know, religious person at making sure I never ever miss a workout, but I've missed very few workouts.

And, you know, at 53, You know, one of the choices that we all get to make is our, our, uh, how we work on our health. You know, we all have genetics and we have all that kind of stuff that, you know, some things you can't control, but again, it's stepping back and saying, okay, what can I control? One of the things we all can control is what we do physically, um, to make sure that we're as healthy as can be. And, and, um, figuring out what that looks like for everybody is different. I mean, I like lifting weights. That's always been something. I never really was that fond of cardio exercise and started doing some running a number of years ago. And it's kind of fun. I mean, you talk about how that makes you feel. I mean, I can't imagine, you know, going for more than a week without working out because I know how I feel when I work out versus how I feel when I don't work out.

And I like the feeling of having worked out. You know, you just have so much more energy during the day, that 2 o'clock in the afternoon after you've had lunch. You know, you don't feel tired. If you're not working out, you know, either in the morning or in the evening, though, that 2 o'clock in the afternoon is, is like nap time for you if you don't work out. And, and so those are just some things that I recognize personally. Well, then I value—

Shay: I wanted to bring that same thing up to a point that I wanted to make here is I don't know anybody that consistently works out that says they feel worse. Consistently after working out, right? No. And so, that's a good point of how does it make you feel? We've all had a point in our lives where we've been in great shape, maybe the best shape of our life, maybe just when we've been consistently working out, maybe when we've been consistently going on walks in the morning that we know we feel better during that time. And for whatever reason, life gets in the way, you get sick, you have babies, whatever it is, and you stop and you constantly think about it. You have it in the back of your mind of, you know you should be doing it, but it's hard to get it jump-started. It's hard to get back into that.

And so I think it is important looking at not being too hard on yourself as you do dive back into this. Maybe there's someone listening to this right now that knows, hey, I, you know, I should be working out more. I think all of us probably have that in the back of our mind. Agriculture, sometimes we feel gets in the way. But how do we make that a priority? How do we prioritize that in our lives and how do we fit that into our busy schedule here as planting season kicks off and even beyond that?

Chris: Yeah, well, I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, I'm always a big proponent of exercise and I pick on people that we work with and family members and everything about, you know, make sure, you know, how was your workout this morning or what, you know, what did you do? And a lot of times even with people we work with closely and stuff, you know, it's, I'll bug them and say, you know, why don't you get started? Well, I'm going to start Monday or I'm going to start next week or whatever. Well, how about like right now? You know, I mean, there's never the right time to start. It's like saying I'm going to wait till I have enough money to start having kids. You know, I mean, there's no, there's no like right time. You just, you just have to do it.

And, you know, and the biggest thing, and I was talking to Alyssa about this this morning as we were kind of thinking about, well, you know, what points should we make and One of the things that Alyssa brought up I thought was really key is that, you know, a lot of times people, when they do start, they stop right away because it's not fun, it's painful, they don't really like it, and they're like, you know, I don't want to continue this. But it's to understand that, you know, as time goes on, it does get a little bit easier. It might be painful in the beginning, and you don't have to start out and run 10 miles on the first— you know, it might be—

Shay: You shouldn't. You shouldn't do that.

Chris: Right, yeah, it might be just walk a half a mile or just, You know, whatever it is. I mean, we all are different. We all have different things that we like to do and figure out what that is and just start slow and don't— you're not going to conquer the world, you know, right away. And the other thing is, you know, what's it like, 14? You got to do something 14, 15, maybe 20 times before you start to develop a habit. And that's the other part of it is, is, you know, most people that start with their New Year's resolution of I'm gonna exercise, never get to the point where it becomes a habit. And you got to get through that first few weeks of painful, you know, mental anguish a little bit of I don't really like this and a little bit of pain. But you know, just making sure you don't overdo it when you start and make sure that you create a habit. And there's a lot of reasons for this.

And I know we'll get into this, but I think that's That's some key things that, you know, come top of mind. And it might also just be, you know, have an accountability partner or somebody that picks on you. I mean, I was telling you offline before we got started, a lot of the listeners who listen to our Sunday Market Outlook, I've been bugging Duane. I've been picking on him, you know, the last 2 weeks. You know, I'm like, you know, I called him yesterday before we did our Market Outlook and said, hey, you know, did you— how's your exercise today? Did you run or whatever, you know? He's like, well, if I'm dead, you're going to know that, you know? So, but like I told him, it's not— don't go out and run 10 miles, you know, do start out slow and just start making it a habit because, you know, we all have family. All that stuff's really important to us.

And the reason we do this is so we can be there for our family. You know, we're going to have kids. A lot of people listening to this may or may not have kids yet. They may or may not have grandkids. But you want to, you know, your life extension is directly correlated to working out, you know, and a lot of times, well, I farm and I work on the farm. Well, you don't get crap for a workout on the farm. You don't use the same muscles. You don't get your cardiovascular system operationally, you know, consistently working on the farm. It just doesn't happen anymore.

Shay: The other thing, too, is, you know, some people are quick to point out, well, my grandpa, he smoked 3 packs a day for his life and he lived to be 98. He never worked out a day. And you know, this guy down the road, he ran 8 miles every day, had a heart attack when he was 62, and now he's gone. Sure, those are the exceptions and they're easy to point out. But when you look overall, like you said, the general trend is exercising, eating right, getting good sleep, these things that we're talking about in this Farm Health Series. There's a reason that people talk about it. The science proves it. The data proves it. And more importantly, you touched on it earlier, looking at the quality of life.

What's 100 years of not feeling like you should, knowing that you maybe should work out more, not being able to do things that you enjoy, versus 74 years of having a high quality of life, feeling good about what you're doing, being able to, you know, play sports with your, your kids or your grandkids and enjoying those moments that you might otherwise missed out on. I don't think you can what-if your way out of exercise and truly justify it in a reasonable manner, you know, when it, when it comes to that working out. And I, I think working out looks different for everybody, and we can talk through some of those points here.

But in agriculture, you and I have talked about this a lot, even if you can get in 3 workouts a week, you know, during your busiest times of the year, you might be working 16 hours a day you can find time to get in at least 3 good workouts a week and exercise during the day. You know, it might just be running across the shop to go get a tool, or, you know, picking up some 5-gallon jugs and carrying them across to fill up the oil tank, whatever it may be. There's lots of opportunities to get exercise that is just part of your daily routine that, like we talked about, 30 years ago might have been more routine. But today you can almost sit in the office for 2 weeks as a farm manager or a true farmer and not hardly do anything and have it be extremely detrimental to your health, right?

Chris: And that's just it. I mean, you go, you go 14 days, you start getting muscle atrophy anyway. So if you have been working out and you stop, you know, I noticed it in the spring when we start working long hours, it's hard to, you know, we start putting in long hours, you sleep 4 hours, you don't have the energy to work out, and that starts to play a toll. And when we talked about the sleep in the last podcast, but you know, that, that plays a big role into it. But then also, you know, if you're not exercising, you go a month or whatever, whatever you did up to that point starts going away too. So, you know, I think I'm, I'm of the opinion, you know, your 3-week thing you mentioned, I think to me that's a minimum.

I like working out, you at least 5 times a week, you know, I still think, you know, and maybe not as long a duration, you know, you can do, there's no excuse for not doing at least a 15-minute workout or a 20-minute workout, you know, and Alyssa sent us a list, I don't know if you wanna get ready and kinda read through, I'll have you kinda go through that list, but you know, there's a bunch of different things that we can be doing Now, if you think of the technology that's out there, there's no reason to not exercise and do things that we can do. Why don't you, you have that list there, go through it.

Shay: Yeah, so even with the coronavirus going on, or maybe as a result of it, I should say, lots of businesses are stepping up and there's tons of fantastic stories that are coming out of this. But for instance, the Peloton app is free for 90 days. And they have literally thousands of, of bodyweight workouts, strength, yoga, boot camp style workouts on top of the cycling and treadmill. So it's not just the cycling and treadmill. There's lots of workouts when you think of Peloton. There's tons that you can do. Pinterest, you can search for at-home workouts. There are tons of them out there. Many gyms are posting workouts on social media, and a lot of them are even doing Facebook Live classes. I know Facebook is having issues right now keeping up with church services and live workouts.

And we've talked with a couple people here in the last day that are like, I think this is going to change a lot of things in the industry of realizing how much we can accomplish at home. And maybe we don't even need to have brick and mortar, but finding the workouts, finding those gym classes and things like that online. And then also just listening to fitness podcasts, no different than we do this podcast. You can search for fitness podcasts that talk about everything from eating right to working out to sleep, you know, all these things that are— that we're talking about more in depth, that that is their sole purpose of talking about those things. And one thing that we stumbled along here recently, there's something called the 75 Hard Challenge by Andy Frisella, and there's curse words in it or whatever, so I guess if you listen to that around your kids, be careful on that.

But it's just some neat concepts of holding yourself accountable and, and maintaining that, you know, fight, doing 5 simple things, drinking a gallon of water a day, taking a picture of yourself, doing 2 workouts for 45 minutes, and, and a couple other things, you know. How consistently can you do 2, 3, 5 things every day for a set period of time and then measure it along the way? And so like you and I were talking, there's many different ways that you can measure. Some people respond visually better. Some people like, um, charting and graphing things out. So maybe you weigh yourself at the same time every day. You wake up in the morning, hop on a scale, record it, and chart it over time and look at how that's correlating to your workouts. There's a lot of different ways that you can measure progression and then eventually measure success, whatever you define that success as. Yeah.

Chris: And the other thing I would say too, to a lot of the listeners out there that have young kids, that, you know, I just think it's so important to work out with your family too. I mean, Alyssa and I try to work out at the same time. We've got a lot of gym equipment in our basement, but, you know, having the kids watch what the parents do has a lot to do with the activity level that the kids are going to have. And I just think that's really critical. And, you know, you think of the bonding, you know, I lifted weights with the kids., you know, and teaching them how to lift weights and how to lift properly and all that kind of stuff as they're growing up kind of really helps bond, bond you with the kids. And I just think those kind of things are opportunities that you sure don't want to pass up.

And, you know, we talked about, I mean, that's some of the whys behind it, but, and you were touching on the measuring part too, photos, charts. I would be real careful with the scale. I mean, the one thing that I've noticed on the scale, especially for men anyway, You know, you get— you don't want to get too hung up on the scale because you might lose weight the first week or two you start working out, but your weight might start going back up. But that's because muscle weighs significantly more than fat does. And so, you know, you want to use that as somewhat of a gauge. But I think you really— that photo thing of, you know, maybe measuring your waistline and measuring, you know, certain body parts, your legs and arms and stuff, or that kind of thing.

I think has as much of value in terms of charting your, your progression of how you're doing as much as the scale, or probably more so than the scale does.

Shay: And I think that reflects personally with whatever your goal is. Maybe your goal is just to, you know, be 5 or 10 pounds less, and that's something that you want to make sustainable and achievable over time. Maybe it's fitting back into some clothes that you haven't fit into for a while, or maybe you have a wedding coming up, something for your kids.

Chris: Those are those motivational things, right?

Shay: Yeah, I mean, whatever it is that, that motivates you. But I think more importantly, looking back to the big picture here, is increasing your health so you have improved quality of life for a longer period of time. And, you know, there's lots of different ways to do it, and sometimes you can get caught up in the weeds with all the options that you have. You know, one of the podcasts that we listen to, uh, The Gary Vee Show, Gary Vee Audio Experience, he's very blunt about it. He goes, it's, it's really simple. The only two things you have to do is eat right and work out. He goes, I could go give a conference, say that, walk out, and be over in 37 seconds.

Chris: Exactly.

Shay: And it really is. It's that simple. If you simplify it down to that, it really is that simple. But what's your goal and why are you doing it? And, you know, you and I have talked about this, and I don't really know how, how to say this the right way necessarily, but looking at all the people that we've worked with over the years, one, in agriculture, there is not one person that I've met that is not a hard worker or that would not consider themselves a hard worker. And also along with that is, as an industry, it is an extremely intelligent group of people.

Chris: High level of intelligence.

Shay: I mean, no question about it. The intelligence and the hard work paired together are huge. And I kind of had the realization or an epiphany here a couple months ago. I was questioning myself on why I wasn't working out as much. And the struggles are real here for everybody, you know, like we've talked on the sleep. We're not perfect at this. This is something that we just think is important because we hear the same things consistently with people. We want to provide this value, but we We are too smart as humans in general, and also as those that work in agriculture, we are too smart to not achieve our goals, to not be healthy, and to not extend our lives to provide the love and affection and value to the farm operations and family out there.

Chris: Well, and to add to that, you know, it's, If you're working out in the off-season, and this is kind of still off-season, and guys are starting to get in the field now, but there's a direct correlation. I know a number of years ago Tommy Grassaffi was here and was watching us, was working with us in our operation, and just had made the comment. He said, "Boy, you can tell the people here that work out and the people that don't," you know, as far as, you know, the capacity to, to go without sleep and to work those extra hours and to have more stamina. So there's a direct correlation when you get into spring, heavy spring work and heavy, heavy fall work.

Um, if you are working out ahead of that season, your stamina is way better, you know, and not that we should be not sleeping and working long hours and that stuff for a long period of time, but there's a direct correlation to, you know, if you're working out, you're going to be way better during that timeframe. And it makes you stronger. You're throwing bags of seed or you're climbing around on stuff. You know, in the fall I climb— I run the grain dryer here on our farm, family farm operation, and I'm climbing all over grain bins and all that kind of stuff. I feel way more safe climbing on a ladder, climbing up above semis and doing all that maneuvering around at 53 years old. Don't even think twice about it. I feel like I'm 26, given the fact that I'm working out before that season comes, right? Because I, I feel secure, I feel safe, you know.

So there's, there's a lot of components to that, I think, is really big.

Shay: And, you know, you mentioned your age there, but there is a certain generational difference. And I don't think you can draw a line in the sand and say if you're over 42 or over 57 or whatever it is, you can't really draw a line in the sand there. But there's different trains of thoughts as the, the exercise and the health movements have progressed over time. And there's always been influxes, whether it's Yoga or Jazzercise or whatever crazy workouts there's been over the years. They're all, you know, there's tons of good options out there. And so people see these fads and you see diet trends and you see everything else over time. But coming back to the simple fact of eating right and working out, and so what does that look like for you at your age?

Maybe it's going for a walk, you know, going for a walk with your wife and your dog or your kids playing outside, or doing whatever, and we'll get into that with the next topic. And a key point is you can't outwork a bad diet, and that's why eating right is going to be our next one. But what does that look like for you at your age, and how do you, how do you improve on that? How do you make a difference in your life and in your family's life?

Chris: Right, right.

Shay: So, you know, I think to wrap up here, one thing that you wanted to talk through was looking at the equipment maintenance, and I think that's a pretty consistent message through this whole series, really.

Chris: I'm going to bring that up every single time, is, you know, It's inevitable, every single operation we work with, you know, it's very important that you check the oil on your machinery and equipment. And when, you know, that tractor's got the 250 hours, or a lot of times they're changing at 150 because they want to make sure that that oil is clean and that piece of equipment is really well cared for. And then at the same time, you ask yourself, do I care for my body in the same way I care for my equipment? And a lot of times You know, we probably don't take care of our bodies as well as we take care of the machinery and equipment. So just a correlation there.

And I just want to leave everybody with this topic, just making the comment that the reason we're doing this health series is number one, we had a very important client that we work with bring this up as something that he thought was important that we do. Um, and we know that a lot of other people probably think the same thing. We think that the exercise, if we can be the ones that spark some people to do a better job of exercising and they're healthier and they live a few extra years longer and stuff, that's the goal. It's bringing that perspective to people and we want to add value, not just from the financial side of things, but also the health side of things. You can have all the money in the world, but if you don't live to enjoy it with your family, it really doesn't matter how much money you make.

So, you really got to take care of yourself and understand that the priority starts there.

Shay: That's a great point. And just to wrap up here, looking at this series, you can't, you can't work out if you don't have good sleep. You know, that's number one thing is having that energy, having that focus that you need to do these things. Get a good workout in. That's going to lead into some of our next points of eating right. You know, what does your diet look like? How does that change throughout the year? What does that look like as you travel and go on vacation? And how do you, how do you build that into that whole system? And then mental escapism— how can you work out as part of your mental escapism to step away from the other things that you have going on in your life? And then how does that affect your stress management?

I know for me, getting a good weight workout in or, or a cardio workout in where you're, you know, really burning your lungs and, and feeling that pull there, you know, that really helps with some of that stress management. And, and just You know, like you said, Chris, I think if, if one person gets some value out of this, I would encourage anybody out there that knows that they need to do more on this, if there's small steps that they can take, start today. Start right now with your next meal. Go for a walk. Get a workout in tonight. Do something different in your life to make a difference in your life and to make a difference in your family's life.

Chris: Yep. Go work out.

Shay: Well, Chris, I think this has been a good talk. Hopefully you all get some value out of this. If you have any other suggestions, not only on this health series, but just in the podcast in general, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach out to us, cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. Give Chris a call, 319-533-5703. Stay safe and healthy out there, everyone, and we will catch you next time on the Egg View Pitch. Thanks for joining us on today's episode of the Egg View Pitch. As always, you you can reach out to us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com or duanel@netins.net. We'll catch you next time on the EggView Pitch.