Laura Motes – Healthy Living and Mental Energy

Laura Motes worked as a police officer for twenty-one years, and she knows firsthand how important it is for police officers to always stay focused and alert.

Physical energy is not only the fundamental fuel for our physical activities and emotional well-being, but also fuels our mental skills. To perform at our best, be it concentrating on a task at work or focusing on listening when talking to a loved one, we absolutely need to be able to sustain mental concentration. At the same time, we need to see the world around us the way it is. We need to be realists, and at the same time have an optimistic view of things. Our mental energy provides us with all of these abilities.

The best tools that strengthen mental energy and mental capacity are visualization, mental preparation and rehearsal, positive self-talk, and creativity.

Mental energy needs a balance between energy spending and recovery, just like physical and emotional capacities do. If you lack the mental muscles that you need for performance, for example if you have too short of an attention span, the way to cope with it is similar to what you would do when you want to grow your physical muscles. You need to build your capacity to focus by regularly exercising this mental muscle.

Physical, emotional, and mental energy are all interconnected and feed off one another. This is why paying attention to all them is so important, especially if your profession demands all three of them. For example, if you are a police officer like Laura Motes, then you need to be physically fit, emotionally stable, and mentally focused at all times.

 

Laura Motes – The Importance of Strength Training for Healthy Living after the Age of Forty

As a former police officer, Laura Motes knows how important it is for people of all ages to stay as healthy as possible.

If you realize that you need to start exercising, but can’t decide between strength and cardiovascular training, you should simply choose both.

Cardio training improves cardiovascular fitness, mood, and heart-rate variability.

Strength training is important because loss of physical strength is connected with reduced physical energy, and aging. On average, we lose around one-half of a pound of muscle mass after the age of forty if we don’t do any strength training.

One of the most significant studies about the profound effects of strength training was published in the Journal of American Medical Association in 1990. The study consisted of a group of nursing home residents, aged eighty-six to ninety-six, who went through a strength-training exercise routine. All of the participants of the study had serious chronic diseases. Most of the participants also used walkers or a cane. As a result of their strength training, the participants increased their average strength by 175%, and their balance by forty-eight percent%.

When a person leads an active physical life, they build physical energy capacity, and can remain active for many years. However, sedentary office workers have no regular physical demands. The modern life keeps removing more and more physical activities from people’s lives, from having to wash dishes, to having to walk to work. Today, many people have dishwashers, robotic vacuum cleaners, cars, and all kinds of gadgets that make physical activity unnecessary. This results in the absence of physical exercise and premature aging.

Laura Motes has been exercising for years, and she fully intends to keep engaging in different sports and activities, despite her age.