Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Weight Loss: Exercise University

One of the most common excuses I get about exercise is the lost time during the day that an hour of exercise, plus the time getting there and back, and the time to clean up, takes out of the day. Well my exercise time is some of my most productive time of the day, and not simply what the exercise accomplishes to improve your life(more about that in a later post). In a year of exercising five days a week you could complete eight full college courses or the equivalent of a full year of college.

Several weeks ago I went to a motivational seminar and Zig Zigler was one of the speakers. He talked about many years ago proposing something he called Auto University. What he meant by this is that the average person in the US spends over an hour a day in their car. Most people either listen to music or in Zig's words 'even worse they listened to talk radio.' He told people instead of listening to the radio they should listen to college courses on tape. Ones which I have listened to for the last fifteen years have been the courses from the Learning Company. I have bought and listened to over 90 courses over the twelve years from 1995 to 2007. On average listening to eight or nine complete college courses each year. These were courses on every subject imaginable including: History, Philosophy; Astronomy; Literature; Bible studies, biology; Law, Economics and many others.

The point Zig made and that I have lived for many years is that you can turn almost wasted moment into valuable learning that can have long term benefit. Now while you exercise your mind can be occupied similarly to what Zig recommends and I have done while driving.So my suggestion is turn your exercise time into learning time, Exercise University, so to speak. The tools are available now to do it very inexpensively if not free. All you need is a computer, Internet access and a MP3 player of choice(I use an I-pod).

To start with from your Internet browser go to apple,com (whether you have an Apple computer, an I-pod or not). From this page click on the I-Pod button along the top row. On the new page you go to on the right hand side there is a button to click to download I=Tunes. Go ahead and download it. It will ask for your e-mail, however, you do not need to give it, it still lets you get the software. Go ahead and install I-tunes on your computer. Here is the best part the two areas you will download from are completely free. Literally millions of hours of downloads that are completely free. Every Podcast and every course in I-Tunes University are absolutely free. Let me explain what podcasts and I-Tunes University are and how they got started.

Podcasting began in 2002 but really took off in 2006. Think about the typical NPR radio show and that will give you a little of the feel of a podcast. They can be any length from one minute to several hours. Most of them are under one hour and even many under ten minutes. Initially in the early age of podcasts they were produced by people sitting in there home and on almost any subject that the producer was interested in. I use to challenge people to give me any topic and I have never been stumped of not being able to find a podcast on that subject. Since the early age of podcasts two other common forms have come along. One is radio and TV shows will podcast the audio portion of the show as a podcast. So you can listen to the show at your convenience. Now almost all radio shows are podcast, usually within a day of the original broadcast. Many TV shows also, for example the three main News Cable Networks podcast the audio of a;ll there shows, Comedy Central podcast the audio of both the Daily Show and Colbert Report and many more. Many organizations that have internal lecture series, like the Long Now Foundation, will podcast the audio of those lectures and sometime the video also as a separate podcast.

A podcast is a series of shows and there will be many episodes. In I-tunes you would subscribe to a podcast and then whenever another episode is released it will appear in your podcast section of I-Tunes. I subscribe to around 200 podcasts ( will post these in a Note on my Facebook page). Some are released daily, some weekly and some less often.

Prior to two years ago a few universities would release the audio from college courses and I began listening, in 2006, to whole college courses that were released for free. The Learning Company lost me as a customer at that point. Then in 2008 I-tunes began a separate section in there store (but all free) I-Tunes University. They started with courses from about a dozen universities, they now have over one hundred. Some universities , such as Harvard as an example, record and podcast through I-tunes University nearly every course taught on campus. Using Harvard as an example, they have a webpage for each course. On this webpage the Professor will be listed with his e-mail, All the course handouts will be linked. The reading list will be given. I have gotten the books for many of these courses and have e-mailed the professor with questions and I have never not received and answer and always in less then a week and most of the time in a few days I listen to a complete course on average one per month, plus catching up on my podcasts. Lets say you are a busy exec, you could have your subordinates prepare their reports as dictations that you could listen to. So don't use the 'I don't have enough time' excuse, do what I'm doing. Now I am not getting college credit, I don't need it. But I am getting the knowledge and experience. Also I'm making my exercise time doubly productive.