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I’ve heard people talk about how exercising in the morning, but I never thought that would be me. None the less I’ve done it twice now, and I’m telling you that within minutes of stepping on the treadmill, I felt better about myself.

So in today’s podcast you are right there with me at 5:30 AM as I am out of town and going to take advantage of their workout facility. I then have you follow me as I provide some motivational tips from the spark book.

In this case, I ended up shorting myself on sleep which in the long run is not good. Why?

You are cranky when you’re tired and may start arguments with people which adds more stress to your life, which inhibits weight loss.

Your body releases hormones that make it harder to lose weight.

Your motivation, and potentially your will power may be less.

Your body needs the rest to rebuild the muscles you’ve worked.

So I knew that going into the day and finished OK (but would not make losing sleep a habit).

Try It

As I said, I would NEVER think I was an exercise in the morning person, but I’m going to try to work this into my work week and see how it fits into “real” life (as the weekend is like another world).

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Many of you know that I am a technical trainer. I’ve been teaching people about technology for over 20 years. From time to time you have to make classes and courses from scratch. There is a process used to develop and implement a new class it’s called the ADDIE approach and while it works for building a new course, it can also be used in designing a new healthier lifestyle.

Analysis Phase
In the analysis phase, the instructional problem is clarified, the instructional goals and objectives are established and the learning environment and learner’s existing knowledge and skills are identified. Below are some of the questions that are addressed during the analysis phase:

• Who are the learners and what are their characteristics? (what are our eating habits)
• What is the new behavioral outcome? (what do we want to weigh eventually)
• What types of learning constraints exist? (what are our obstacles)
• What are the delivery options? (what options do we have in terms of packing lunches, exercising).
• What is the timeline for project completion? (when do we want to hit our target goal)

If we put this into a healthy lifestyle area we can say this is where we can weigh ourselves, measure ourselves, write down what we eat and see just how many calories we are eating. Write down any exercise we do and see how many calories we burn.

Design Phase
The design phase deals with learning objectives, assessment instruments, exercises, content, subject matter analysis, lesson planning and media selection. The design phase should be systematic and specific. Systematic means a logical, orderly method of identifying, developing and evaluating a set of planned strategies targeted for attaining the project’s goals. Specific means each element of the instructional design plan needs to be executed with attention to details.

These are steps involved in design phase:
1. Document the project’s instructional, visual and technical design strategy
2. Apply instructional strategies according to the intended behavioral outcomes by domain (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor).

In a healthy world, we are answering the question “How” are we going to get healthy? What is our strategy. We need to be specific such as “Exercise for 45 minutes 4 times a day.” If we wanted to get more specific we could say “burn 1200 calories through exercise.” We can say “We will pack our lunch and place it in a lunch box that will keep it cool so I do not need to rely on a refrigerator.” I will cook food on Sunday, and freeze it in small packages for the rest of the week.

Development Phase
The development phase is where instructional designers and developers create and assemble the content assets that were blueprinted in the design phase. In this phase, storyboards and graphics are designed. If elearning is involved, programmers develop and/or integrate technologies. Testers perform debugging procedures. The project is reviewed and revised according to the feedback received.

This is where put the pieces into place. Do you need a heart rate monitor? Are you going to use Workout DVDs because a gym membership is not in the budget? We are assembling out assets. Do we have a friend who can be our “workout buddy”? Do we have some music picked out that we can exercise to?

Implementation Phase
During the implementation phase, a procedure for training the facilitators and the learners is developed. The facilitators’ training should cover the course curriculum, learning outcomes, method of delivery, and testing procedures. Preparation of the learners includes training them on new tools (software or hardware) and student registration.

This is where we put our “healthy plan” it into place. All the planning and thinking ahead have lead to the steps you are now taking. If you follow the “Lesson Plan” you designed, you should achieve your “objective” and become healthier.

Evaluation Phase
The evaluation phase consists typically of surveys (as you exit the class) or test which show you know the knowledge. Realize if the majority of a class fails on a certain subject it may not be the students, it may be the class design. As a trainer there are times when I make notes in class, “Students don’t have same version of software as instructor,” and I know later go back and fix this. For you it might be “Take the Don Henley out of the workout music playlist.” An objective is a skill we want students to showcase outside of the classroom. This means we know they understand. If not, we go back and tweak. So you might find out that working out first thing in the morning is too much of a burden with you and the kids. This either means you get up earlier, or move exercise to another time. You evaluate, and tweak.
Tweaking is looking at your objectives (losing weight, etc something that can be measured, viewed) and identifying what didn’t work, and coming up with a new design that needs developed and implemented.
Then once it’s implemented you know what you do? That’s right evaluate? Is it working? Good keep doing it. If it’s not, tweak and repeat.

Analyze
Design
Develop
Implement
Evaluate

Try it. I bet you get an “A.”

Workout Music Track
It is hard to stay in your chair when you listen to the class “It takes two” from Rob Base

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