Content

• Create an environment for communication
• What are the statistics and stages of Remote Work Burnout? How to prevent it?
• Empower your workforce to contribute
• Design your employee experience to reduce burnout.
• Ready to get started? Be up and running in minutes.
• Why Is Remote Work Burnout Increasing?

Why not get them out of their PJs and make them feel like part of the team with a custom t-shirt? Feature the company logo on a flattering tee, and they’ll be proud to wear remote work burnout their new swag to your virtual conferences. It can be a central space for hosting live events that all of your employees can attend without leaving their home office.

The first step toward a solution is gaining insight into the situation. To get started, think about these top five reasons for burnout on the job. Since nonverbal cues account for more than half of all messages sent and received, it is crucial to read workers’ body language as carefully as you do their words. You should watch for anxiety, boredom, or annoyance, even in distant phone conversations or video conferences. If workers are becoming more agitated than usual, it is a sign that they are getting close to their tolerance threshold. In a similar vein, many work-from-home parents also take the role of primary childcare provider.

Create an environment for communication

An office environment allowed teams to interact and carve out their unique roles, creating diverse teams with each individual having core expertise. The best way to streamline roles and responsibilities, especially for new hires, is to have clear job descriptions. Coping with a pandemic — especially while watching a familiar, scary pace of rising Covid-19 cases — can feel overwhelming.

• But, it also means that she’s constantly juggling work tasks and childcare.
• Management may reassure staff that time off is valued by including rejuvenation breaks in the workplace.
• No team will make a drastic shift in how they operate if they don’t think you’re serious about it.
• Even if you don’t have children, like Alice, scheduling work time without being distracted by household chores, personal errands, etc., can feel tricky.
• Having people who can support you and empathize with your struggles will help you prevent burnout, as you’ll have more people to help you with your emotional needs.
• They encourage teamwork and initiate effective, frequent communication and help to align their team members.
• Taking ownership of their role in preventing burnout shows they are fully committed to helping every employee excel.

This list of potential burnout causes is commonly accepted and can be used by business leaders to help detect remote burnout warning signs and start meaningful conversations with employees. Maintaining a regular workout schedule can prevent burnout because it helps prevent your brain from getting over-stimulated by stimulation caused by work. Due to burnout, many people experience mental problems such as depression and anxiety. Exercise can help prevent these mental problems because it helps relieve stress in your life. The third way to prevent burnout is to take breaks for your body. You can prevent burnout if you know how much time your body needs between tasks.

What are the statistics and stages of Remote Work Burnout? How to prevent it?

Consider reducing the length of your meetings and giving your employees some screen-free time. Cheer them up with a surprise gift, or use webinar tools to host events and provide them with optional health and wellbeing subscriptions. The good news is there are a few steps you can take to look after your employees and keep the business running smoothly.

• But it takes effort and practice to get past the idiosyncrasies of async communication.
• One of the best ways to prevent burnout is to establish a routine.
• You see, collaboration technology is making remote teams more efficient and productive, but the human body is the weakest link in a distributed workforce infrastructure.
• Why not get them out of their PJs and make them feel like part of the team with a custom t-shirt?
• Take your office on the road and hit up a busy spot that isn’t a coffee shop, or book a day from a local coworking facility.

When the scope and timeline of a project changes dramatically, it’s nearly impossible for employees to not feel stressed. When you set the due date in your project management system, keep it… even if it means scaling down the scope or final deliverables. As for preventing burnout, yoga is an incredible way to be mindful, learn about your body and relieve stress. If you don’t believe me, AloYoga or Five Parks Yoga with Erin on YouTube. Let’s talk about how to avoid burnout while working from home or working remotely. With these tips for working remotely from home, we share how tips for productivity and staying positive. Here are frequently asked questions about burnout in remote employees.

Empower your workforce to contribute

You can find more ways that have been proven effective for organizations to support their workforce. It’s been a year since the world shifted to a remote work model. Countries still struggle with the COVID-19 crisis, and with the disruption set to continue, work-from-home burnout is worrying organizations.

Employees who have the opportunity to do what they do best are 57% less likely to experience burnout frequently. When people have the opportunity to tap into their strengths, they are more engaged, more effective, less stressed and more focused on doing their best work — rather than seeing their job as a burden.

Design your employee experience to reduce burnout.

Leaders and managers should align on the right amount of job autonomy and flexibility when designing or redesigning a job. When wellbeing is a priority, preventing and reducing burnout is an imperative. Employees who have a space that helps them connect with coworkers are 26% less likely to feel burnout frequently. Individuals have their own preferences for which work environments suit them best.

• Then, we’ll dive into the challenges facing managers and learn how they can use data to target burnout from the beginning.
• Alcohol masks some of your burnout symptoms and lulls you into a sense of well-being.
• There is not a lot of research on remote burnout, but I suspect people like us are exposed to more risk than office workers due to the fact that we may overlook many early symptoms.
• As a result, they are forced to put in longer hours than they used to.
• If your workforce is giving direct feedback on areas that need improvement, simply listening is not enough.

Food, particularly sugar, has been getting a lot of heat in the media for quite some time. Food companies are chastised for creating foods that cause diabetes, obesity, and my personal favorite, “diabesity”.

Is this actually true? Have we become unwittingly addicted?

Science says no.

The widely held belief that the consumption of sugar leads to addiction is simply a case of mistaken identity, which in this case happens to be pleasure. Sugar may be made of chemical components (as is everything), but it isn’t a drug.

Rats! Low down, good for nothing, dirty, stinkin’ rats!

In 2007 Lenoir et al studied the preferences of rats when given the choice between saccharin sweetened water and intravenous cocaine. In short, they concluded that “sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug sensitized and addicted individuals.” Sounds convincing, right? It rang pretty clear with me as well. I used to cite this study for years.

The researchers hypothesized the reason why the rats chose sweetened water over drugs is the same reason you choose ice cream over broccoli at the grocery store…dopamine. In short, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that tells you something is pleasurable, creating a positive feedback loop that will shape your behavior to repeat pleasurable behavior.

This can become a process necessary for a species to survive. If I were a woman (thank God I’m not) the logistics of childbirth, let alone the experience, would keep me celibate. However, neurotransmitters tell us sex is pleasurable so we continue to do it, seemingly without regard for all the consequences. Triggering the pleasure center of the brain is why we do foolish things like jump out of planes, ride motorcycles, and stick syringes in our arms.
At a primordial level this was and continues to be the same experience with food. Again, this makes sense. If we had little incentive outside of hunger to eat, our species would probably never had survived. So as you can see, this study makes sense.

Pleasure vs. Addiction

The Lenoir study makes a pretty convincing argument in favor of food addiction. In fact, so convincing that it’s one of the most cited sources on the topic. This paints addiction with too broad a brush. Addiction requires more than a strong desire for something. If the definition of addiction was simply a positive feedback loop then everything we enjoy would result in down-regulated dopamine receptors and lead to addiction, but this simply isn’t the case. By taking a step back and looking logically at how pleasure relates to addiction you can begin to debunk this hypothesis
Logically food or sugar “addiction” is simply not the same as substance abuse.

The “Other Rat Experiment”

In 2013 researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham determined that addiction is formed through a process other than simple reward. “The molecular events that form such “reward memories” appear to differ from those created by drug addiction, despite the popular theory that addiction hijacks normal reward pathway.”

”Ancient memory types include those that remind us what to fear, what to seek out (reward), how to move (motor memory) and navigate (place memory). More recent developments enable us to remember the year Columbus sailed and our wedding day.”

The evidence collected shows the most primitive parts of the mammalian brain (which, if you’re reading this, you got one) has formed brain circuits to encourage the survival of a species, with different memories formed by different circuitry. Reward produced by dopamine can be thought of as an evolutionary process to encourage the survival of a species. Food provides nutrients so we got hardwired to enjoy it. Sex results in offspring and we got hardwired to it as well.

Yes, drugs inarguably use this same reward mechanism, but there is evidence they engage an additional mechanism that makes the response much more powerful, partly offering an explanation between the ecstasy of drugs and pleasure of food. The difference between pleasure from food and pleasure from drugs is that while both may stimulate the release of dopamine, drugs specifically affect the region where the dopamine signals are received. Addiction is a response more powerful than pleasure.

“Although drug experiences may co-opt normal reward mechanisms to some extent, our results suggest they also may engage entirely separate epigenetic mechanisms that contribute only to addiction and that may explain its strength.”

“Muscly Armed Paper Boy Come to Bring the Good News!”
-Herbert

There’s good news and bad news. The good news you already know, sugar is not addictive. The bad news, it still may be habit forming and habits can be hard to break. Food irrefutably makes us feel good, and with every opportunity to indulge the temptations are great. Luckily the pull is not as strong as addiction, and can be thwarted with a little behavioral modification. A simple change such as navigating a different path through the grocery store can help immensely.

You are not a slave to food. You have complete control over your diet, but many people find taking that first step difficult. Begin by making 1 or 2 small and sustainable changes, like trading one bad food for a healthy one, or taking a route home that doesn’t bring you past the McDonald’s. You’re not addicted, science proved it.

Small sustainable changes will eventually add up to permanent change and put you on a road to a healthier body.

If you’re having trouble with this process I may just happen to know a personal trainer or two with a lot of success in this very thing. Just sayin’.

-Mike

Sources:
Lenoir M, Serre F, Cantin L, Ahmed SH (2007) Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward. PLoS ONE 2(8): e698. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000698

University of Alabama at Birmingham. “How the brain remembers pleasure: Implications for addiction.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 August 2013. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130825171530.htm>.

Father forgive me, for I have sinned. I went to Perkins for breakfast this morning. Hold on, it gets worse. Breakfast consisted of two breaded and fried chicken breasts topped with processed slices of American “cheese”, all of which was smothered in something they considered to be gravy and sandwiched between two biscuits. On the side there were two eggs, two strips of bacon, and hash browns. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that terrible. Unsurprisingly, I can already feel a demon in my stomach begging to be exorcised.

If you’re at all familiar with the underlying nutrition principles we espouse at Burn, such a breakfast probably seems sacrilegious. In fact, there are few circumstances I’d recommend such a meal to anybody. The thing is, his wasn’t a cheat meal, I’m not “bulking”, it wasn’t a momentary lapse in reason, and I didn’t lose a bet. It was just a meal. Allow me to explain myself.

Nutrition is simple, but it isn’t two-dimensional simple. Food isn’t all good or all bad. It’s circumstantial. The occasional low-grade American breakfast isn’t going to set back years of progress. In a pinch it can help the body avoid a prolonged state of catabolism, and if you want to be bigger or stronger that’s a good thing. By tying in this meal to the circumstances surrounding it, you’ll find that even though it is low quality and better choices do exist, it isn’t as terrible as it may seem.

At this point in time my only concern lies in strength. I couldn’t care less about my weight, body composition, or physique. As long as the weight on the bar keeps going up I’m satisfied. In the case of strength, only thing that matters nutritionally is recovery. If I’m hungry I’m going to eat, if I haven’t been eating enough I’m going to eat more, and if I’m in a pinch those meals aren’t always going to be healthy (especially on the few days that I can barely drag my ass out of bed in time for work). Had it been better if I chose a venison steak with a side of sweet potato hash? Of course. Would it have been worse if I skipped breakfast and waited several more hours before eating? Absolutely. In certain circumstances it’s better to eat poorly than miss a meal. Other times skipping a meal may be better than settling for something subpar. It’s great if you like to stay lean, but a pain in the ass for developing size or strength.

I’m not suggesting that you go out and cram your face full of shitty food. Better food always yields better results. That’s worth repeating; better food always yields better results. If I would’ve eaten a better meal this morning I would’ve gotten more benefit from it. Less of the meal would have gone to waste, my stomach wouldn’t be barking at me, and I would feel less lethargic. All those things will pass, pun intended. What wouldn’t pass is the decline in performance throughout my training session.

The point I’ve been trying to make throughout this post is that you don’t have to be a food Nazi. Most of the time you can avoid putting yourself in a circumstance that forces you to make a bad choice or a worse choice, but sometimes shit will happen and you’re going to have to make due with what’s available. You know either won’t be ideal and may even contribute to a very brief setback. When that happens, don’t worry about it and move on. As long as you’re on track the majority of the time you’re going to see progress. Torturing yourself over every little dietary choice you make opens the door making nutrition about emotion. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to see a man about a horse.

There are very few absolutes in the world of strength and conditioning. There are a million ways to get big and a million ways to get strong; anybody who claims to have the single best method for developing either is full of shit. Just about the only thing you can count on is that the development of strength, power, or size requires progressive overload, and unless you’re a novice, the significant development of any of them will not be achieved through the same means.

Lifting makes muscles grow. That’s about the extent to which most people understand weight training, but there’s clearly much more to it than that. The body has specific adaptations to specific different training demands. In order to be bigger, stronger, faster, or some combination of the three there needs to be an understanding that they aren’t achieved through the same means.

Generating Hypertrophy

In a nutshell, hypertrophy occurs when skeletal muscle fibers repair from the damage created by training. These fibers are generally lumped into 3 categories (in reality there’s at least 7): slow twitch (type I), fast twitch (type IIX), and intermediate (type IIA), which are innervated under different loads and circumstances. Generating hypertrophy requires using different stimuli to recruit, damage, and develop the full spectrum of muscle fibers.

Aside from the moderate amount of necessary strength work (more on this in a bit), hypertrophy can be seen as an endurance endeavor. Due to the nature of type I fibers, they require significantly more volume for development. Training with a longer time under tension through a slower tempo or higher reps, and the implementation of strategies designed to create as much muscle trauma as possible is necessary to get a muscle to grow. The point of emphasis lies more in driving tension into a muscle and feeling it contract with every rep than piling on weight on a barbell and moving it from point A to point B.

That isn’t to say there isn’t a fair amount of size to be had when lifting with heavier loads. A focus on strength will recruit the easier to grow fast twitch fibers and eventually allow heavier loads to be used with higher volumes, creating more damage. However, by continually focusing on absolute strength and power production neglects sufficient damage to roughly half of the muscle fiber, leaving a lot of size on the table. Thorough development of the less powerful and fatigue resistant type I fibers means using lower intensities and greater volumes than those used in most strength specific work.

The cyclical breakdown and recovery of a muscle will result in several physiological changes. As a muscle adapts to a continually higher volume of work it will most likely experience greater blood flow, increased stores of muscle glycogen, and of course greater muscle size across all fiber types, but little has been done to create the neurological adaptations necessary to move heavy loads or produce more power.

Developing Strength and Power

Contrary to what many people believe, strength and power are not one in the same. Strength is the simply ability to move a load whereas power is the expression of the time it takes to move a load. Regardless of their differences, it takes more than the adaptations from muscle trauma to create either. Their development is more about adaptations to the nervous system and less about breaking down muscle tissue, making them more similar to a skill. Like any skill, efficient neurological pathways need to be created. This happens by focusing on moving weight with a specific technique and/or speed, and less about consciously flexing a specific muscle. The concern lies in properly training a movement pattern, not which muscle is being isolated. It’s these neurological adaptations, much more than increased muscle hypertrophy, that lead to gains in strength and power.

Yes, you will generate hypertrophy while training to develop power or strength, but nowhere near the extent of a bodybuilder. Velocity generated hypertrophy is a result of the growth experienced by the type IIX and even IIA fibers. Type IIX fibers are capable of producing force at a high velocity and are the most susceptible to growth, whereas type IIA fibers can be trained to take on type IIX characteristics and experience similar changes. Consider sprinting, arguably the greatest expression of power. It will develop significant growth in fast twitch fibers, but leave the slow twitch fibers fairly underdeveloped. In fact, if it’s your goal to move your body as fast as possible excessive hypertrophy is nothing more than unnecessary weight that will slow you down.

The way in which hypertrophy is generated through maximal, or near maximal loads is basically the same as when training with the submaximal loads used in bodybuilding. A max effort attempt will recruit all fiber types and there will be damage (and growth) across all muscle fibers. The difference lies in the amount of trauma placed upon them. With respect to proper loading parameters, trauma to a muscle is largely a product of training volume. Attempting to maintain a high training volume at maximal or near maximal loads is not sustainable, making increases in size as significant as a bodybuilder unlikely.

The neurological demand of strength and power production will limit how much work you can accomplish in a given training session. To paraphrase Charlie Francis, “In the real world, where you don’t have the capacity to do everything, you must choose to do what will benefit you the most.” If you expect to develop a significant amount of strength you need to do a significant amount of strength work. A fair amount of time is spent moving loads that are greater than 80% of your 1RM and lower intensities are trained in a manner meant to improve power, both are neurologically demanding. Once you factor in overtraining, CNS demand, and other training limitations such as a drop in hormone production over time you have little time and ability left to spend on volume and time under tension.

Are There Two Types of Muscle Hypertrophy?

Most people associate hypertrophy with increases in the actual size of the muscle and its contractile components. When a muscle becomes damaged it will respond by furthering its ability to handle more stress (i.e. load and repetitive action) with an increased in the size and possibly number of muscle fibers contained within a muscle belly, also known as hyperplasia. This increase in contractile components is referred to as myofibril hypertrophy.

The other often referenced cause of muscle growth is sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. It’s simply a reference to the increase of non-contractile components in the muscle, basically an increase the intracellular fluid within a muscle. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is commonly referred as nonfunctional hypertrophy because it does nothing to improve the contractile properties of the muscle, leading only to increases in its size.

The existence of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is still up for debate. Prominent names in the strength and conditioning field such as Vladimir Zatsiorsky, Mel Siff, and Charles Poliquin go into greater depth differentiating it between myofibril hypertrophy, but evidence supporting it is scant. Most is sited from obscure Cold War era research that never made it across the iron curtain and is largely anecdotal in Western training philosophies. Though it’s easily dismissed as broscience the increased density of mitochondria and capillaries within muscle tissue does lend some support to the idea of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.

Final Thoughts

Whether or not there are two different types of hypertrophy remains to be seen, but for the sake of the general population it’s largely irrelevant.   Training methods to generate sarcoplasmic hypertrophy are basically high volume/high trauma sets, and necessary regardless of what you call the outcome. What is clear is that not all muscle growth is the same and different training programs yield different results. You’re not going to get freakishly huge training only for strength and you’re not going to get freakishly strong training only for size.

Strength, power, and size development are not quite as intertwined as most people believe, but they’re not mutually exclusive either. Increases in muscle size while training for strength and power are merely a side-effect of training, not the intent. Athletes are judged on performance, not appearance. When focusing on hypertrophy, size is the intent, and therefore maximized. Nobody cares how much a bodybuilder can squat or how high he can jump. All that matters is how he looks on stage.

Size, power, and strength can be a synergist to one another and in many cases a necessary one. Though it is prudent to direct a training program toward the desired goal, a properly designed program will get you strength, size, and just about any other desired adaptation. That however, is a topic about program design which merits its own conversation at a later time.

With 2015 right around the corner many people are gearing up to finally get in some other shape than round. For many this will be the latest in a long line of failed attempts, and many others will find the journey just as difficult, confusing, and frustrating. With the oversaturation of information available it’s important to take a step back and simplify things a bit. Here are a few straightforward tips that should help keep your resolution from derailing.

Nutrition is Important, so Keep it Simple: When it comes to nutrition, don’t start off by worrying about calories, carbohydrates, fats, and protein. There is a time and a place for that and it isn’t now. Calories matter, but they’re not as important as you think. Keep things simple and start by following one simple rule laid out by Jack LaLanne: If God made it, eat it. If man made it, don’t touch it. Avoid prepackaged foods and try to eat things that came from the ground or had a mother. Making drastic changes at once can be a challenge, which leads me to my next point…

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day, You Won’t Be Either: The famous marshmallow test taught us that those who are better able to delay gratification have better continual success. It also showed people who cannot delay gratification are 30% more likely to be overweight and suffer higher rates of depression and drug addiction. Drastic results usually require drastic changes, but they don’t need to happen all at once. Self-help professionals love to tell you it takes around 21 days to develop a good habit, but the reality is that on average it takes closer to 66. Make incremental changes and adhere to them. If it took you 15 years to get to your current state of dysfunction don’t expect to get fit in one week. Don’t expect perfection. You’re a human being, and human beings are great at sucking at life. Your goal is to suck a little less.

Focus on Strength Training: Regardless of your goal, strength will make it easier to reach. Think of training as systemic. A bout of exercise doesn’t just work the muscles; it also has a significant impact on hormone production and regulation as well as the respiratory and circulatory systems. This doesn’t mean you can pop off a few sets of arm curls and expect to be jacked. Big multi-joint lifts like squats and deads are the best at generating a greater training response. Of course, the most obvious benefit of strength training is strength. A stronger body will move through life with greater ease, be less prone to injury, and be able to get more out of each workout.

Skip the Treadmill: Unless you actually enjoy doing long bouts of cardio you’re better off skipping it. It’s a horribly inefficient use of your training time. If you’re looking for noticeable results your time is better spent under a barbell. The experience I’ve had with clients consistently shows those who focus on weight training and sprint work enjoy much better progress than the cardio crowd. Next time you’re at the gym look for the best bodies and where they’re spending their time. It isn’t by the stationary bikes and stair climbers, and it sure as hell isn’t in a step class.

Learn The Basics: Deads, squats, chins, and presses are basic lifts that give you the greatest bang for your buck. It’s needless to say, they should be at the core of nearly every exercise program, and your ability to improve these lifts will determine how well you can progress. Don’t worry about continually trying to add new lifts, movement patterns, volume, weight, sets, and reps all at once. Develop competent execution of the basics and focus on progression through one variable at a time. This can be as simple as increasing the weight, dropping your rest, or simply adding one or two seconds to your tempo each week.

Hire Somebody If Possible, But Be Cautious: Knowledge of a topic is one thing, being able to implement is something different. Your chances of success are much greater when direction is given by someone who has a wealth of experience helping people get bigger, stronger, faster, leaner, etc… The trick is finding a personal trainer or strength coach who is competent. There is a misconception that personal trainers are generally the same and working out is working out. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Judge a personal trainer or strength coach by their body of work. Have they produced results? Have they shown they can do so repeatedly? If not, look elsewhere.

Last but Certainly Not Least: If this is your first rodeo and you’re just looking for any positive change the rules are simple; eat real food and move your body. Remember, change is the result of applying a new stimulus to the body. For many people doing anything at all is a move in the right direction, you’d be surprised what a simple walk can accomplish. Others will have to take a more in depth approach. Different goals require different approaches. Filter out all the bullshit and find the approach that works for you. When in doubt, you can’t go wrong with eating clean and lifting big.