In a world driven by the latest trends with large corporations behind the wheel, everybody is looking for their individual key to success. Admittedly, there is not just one right path to take to drive you to the top. However, key lifestyle changes and decisions can definitely help to streamline your way there! 

Exercise is a key factor that many people disregard because they don’t view it as an essential part of their busy schedule. When it comes to changing small things to make a big difference in your life, though, adding exercise could be a life changer.

It can be incredibly difficult to not only make time for exercise in your schedule, but also to add in the travel time it takes to get to and from the gym. Communal workspaces have become a quickly growing trend and these businesses have seen a need to be met for the working body. 

There are spaces, like CircleHub, that not only include meeting areas and working office spaces, but have a built-in gym as well. These fitness centers help to pick up the pace between working out and getting to work.

How does all of this really help you though? Is it not just quicker to get right to work and get it done?

In the end, no. Below, we have listed some of the top ways that scientists have found exercise to help you. These directly relate to your rate of work, as well as its effectiveness.

Beats Down on Stress

Meetings, assignments, work overload. All of these are about as common as breathing nowadays. Without an end in sight for most of us, exercising regularly can be crucial to surviving the tensions of the modern day work environment. 

Wouldn’t adding something to your schedule just create more stress? 

It’s actually what exercise does for your body and mind that makes the difference in the end. Rest, in our context meaning sitting for long periods of time, doesn’t actually relax your muscles. Instead, it causes them to tighten and become accustomed only to the small movements that you do during the day. 

Exercise helps to widen your range of motion. This ends up loosening your muscles over a short period of time. Then, when you are done for the day, you will often feel looser in all the important places and tighter in the muscles you need to be stronger.

Being less stressed can help you to work more efficiently as well as handle your employees better. Exercising to reduce stress helps you to be less irritable and also opens your mind up to express creativity.

Naturally Boosts Endorphins 

Another factor that impacts stress relief and seeps through into the rest of your life is the endorphin boost that exercise gives you. Every time you exercise, your body releases endorphins. These chemicals react with your brain to reduce your sensations of pain. It also acts as a mood booster, creating a positive feeling throughout the body and in the brain.

For many people, exercise will be recommended by a doctor to help offset symptoms caused by depression and anxiety. As more and more hardworking people are being diagnosed with these every year, it is good to get ahead of it. 

Starting a regular exercise routine will help you to get on the right track for a busy, but healthy, life. To read more about what its effect on your emotional life can be, check out this article by WebMD.

Increases Brain Activity

Exercise is commonly recommended for a middle-of-the-day jumpstart, generally around the lunch hour. The reason for this is that naturally, our bodies will start to flag, losing our first wave of energy from getting started in the morning. 

Instead of trying to pump caffeine into your body, go to the gym and pump some iron, or go for a run. Exercise gets the blood pumping and naturally increases how alert we are.

Another reason that exercise is a good day time activity is the boost it gives your brain. The blood flow in your body doesn’t just make us feel more physically ready, but it increases the “pace” at which we think. 

New studies have started to show that the physical activity associated with prolonged periods of exercise, anything twenty minutes or more, actually increases parts of the brain. These parts of the brain, the medial temporal and prefrontal cortex, are key areas to aiding in memory storage and thinking processes. You can read more details in this article by The Job Network.

So, even if it is a 20 minute break during lunch, you will still achieve the benefits at work that exercise has to offer. Power walking from the office to where you eat, back home, or walking up the stairs once, or even a couple of times. These are all ways to get in some exercise, even if there isn’t a gym nearby.

That is the great thing about the CircleHub working spaces. You don’t have to rush anywhere, to get that energy boost. Head straight from the office area to the CircleHub fitness center in minutes. Get some exercise in along with a full lunch and you will be more than ready for the second half of your day!

Creates a Competitive Spirit

Whether you are battling towards a promotion with determination or trying to beat out your closest competitor, business is often all about competition. Especially if you have a lot of responsibility in your business, you will find yourself asking:

Who can sell the best, BE the best?

Sometimes, even this part of work can be exhausting. Constantly trying harder than everyone else in the industry can be a difficult mindset to keep up. However, exercise allows you to get a reboot of competitive energy, charging that fighting spirit, especially as a CEO. You might want to check out this article on why you should be getting to the gym.

When it comes to winning the competition of business, you need the enhanced ability to remember things as well as be able to prioritize well. Exercise can act as a clean mental slate for many. This gives them the ability to forget the worries and stresses and to look at life from a clearer perspective.

Builds Self-Confidence

When you are just starting out on a career path, or perhaps still trying to break into the field, it can be difficult, defeating at times. 

Without being established, we often have to work our way up, through promotions and many hours of hard work. Believing in yourself is a key to staying motivated towards the end goal of personal success.

Nietzsche once said that the “...the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself.” We tend to be most difficult on ourselves. This can be a good thing when we hold ourselves to a higher standard than others. It can also be quite damaging, though, if we let it get too far.

Working out gives you the chance to find an area of physical activity that you are good at and train until you are better. This helps you to believe in yourself, know that you can do something well and achieve beyond what you thought you were capable of.

This sense of satisfaction with yourself, knowledge of your achievement, doesn’t just carry through until the end of the workout. Instead, you take that with you through the rest of your day. Whether it is dealing with hard life decisions that you were unsure of or guiding a team in the right direction, exercise helps you hold your head up higher.

If you need some guidance on how to get started with this confidence building process, check out Neil Patel’s article on some exercises that are great confidence builders! 

Sometimes we have to fake it ‘til we make it when it comes to exuding the confidence demanded by the business world. However, doing the right exercises can cut down on the “faking it” time and get you ready to walk with shoulders back and head high sooner rather than later.

Helps to Regulate Sleep Patterns

Sometimes it can take us a while to be able to fall asleep at night. This is especially true for those that have a new family. New mothers can find it extremely hard to regulate their sleep patterns. Some people describe their mind’s activity like a hamster on a wheel, going on and on. Many people don’t realize that exercise can actually be a key to regulating your sleeping patterns.

It might be obvious to some, but exercising tires us out physically. This is an aspect of work that many people don’t get anymore. A lot of us have our own cubicle space, so all we need to do is maybe get up to walk over to the water cooler or use the stairs instead of an elevator. 

People are not built to sit for long periods of time, but instead live more effectively when they are able to use the energy stores that our body naturally creates during the day. 

Our body keeps itself on its own schedule. Getting sleep is part of this. Naturally, your body will feel like it isn’t ready to sleep without those energy stores being spent. Exercising helps you to effectively work through these and you will be more than ready for proper sleep when the time comes around.

Generally, exercising regularly doesn’t just mean that you are going to be able to fight off insomnia, but that you will be sleeping deeper throughout the night as well. This will help you to feel more well-rested throughout the day, even with the same amount of sleep.

Keeps You Goal-Oriented

Those that are the most successful in the business world are people that tend to be more goal-oriented. They are driven to create high-achieving goals and to chase after them until they have reached it.

This is part of the allure of a coworking space like CircleHub. Its purpose isn’t just to provide beautiful office spaces and useful amenities, but to provide a sense of community that you cannot build by simply renting out an office space. 

Driven people help to push the drive of other people. This means that as you share the common spaces with other businesses striving to do well, passionate about the work they do, this will help to motivate you and your employees.

This is another benefit of having their fitness center right in the same area as the workspace. Motivating your employees to stay healthy, cheering each other on and giving out new goals and perhaps even business-related rewards is a great way to keep both business and individuals healthy. 

With fitness goals running parallel to business goals, you keep yourself actively trying to make your life better.

Increases Physical Capabilities and Delays Aging

This might not be as needed for everyone in their career. However, whether or not you are needing to build strength for your day-to-day job, building up your body’s strength is beneficial to your overall life health. 

If it hasn’t been made obvious throughout this article, having a balanced and healthy lifestyle doesn’t just carry over into one or two parts of your life, it will have a positive effect that carries over into everything you do.

As our careers move onwards and upwards, we don’t just move towards success, but life begins to pass by. As we get older, exercise doesn’t just help us to feel more confident about ourselves overall. It keeps us moving with agility and allows us to continue doing all of those things that we have enjoyed for so long. Keeping yourself up helps you to keep up everything else in life.

Even without a secret key to success hidden behind the doors of successful millionaires and businessmen, we can still find success. By affecting a change in individual parts of our lives, we may well end up changing the rest of it, our careers, family nature and perspectives.