Strength-In-Work: Pilot Study Invitation

Hello! You are here because your Division has alerted you to this study to build strength during the work day AND you’re interested in participating.

FANTASTIC! – You are cordially invited to this Strength In Work -16 week study where participants will be able to spend up to 35 mins of your working day – (that’s outside of lunch/break times) to WORK OUT.

Please read through this document to see how the study will work, and, then, simply Sign Up using the form towards the bottom of this page, and we’ll get you enrolled.

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THE MOTIVATION FOR THIS STUDY We’re exploring TWO established results from recent literature (and industry practice)

How this Pilot Study Works -sign up now; start up Nov 1.

We’ll get you to the sign up form, below, where you sign up now, and will get all info to begin on nov 1, once signed up. BUT FIRST – what’s the study shape – so you know what to expect.

FOCUS In this pilot what we’ll explore how building strength, getting to that vigorous activity 35mins a day, and maintaining that, affects workplace engagement. To guide practice and capture insights around strength progress and workplace engagement (and how you’re feeling), we’ll ask you to download the app we’ve built for this.

THE APP is based on feedback we got on campus doing a smaller pilot this past spring (more on how to get the New and Improved app, below) . The app provides weekly guides, and captures the feedback and reflections for the study – all anonymously (a few screen shots shown below)

some of the Guidance screens from the app – each week, you’ll see options for movements, measures, and mechanisms for timing, tracking and reflecting on your experience.

WEEKLY PREP MEETS Also, we’ll be hosting a TEAM for participants and weekly catch ups on TEAMS, to review questions from the past week and to prep for the week coming up. These will be recorded in case you can’t make the time.

Also, you can do your strength work anywhere that works for you – it’s all what’s called “body weight” so no special equipment required.

In the next sections, we overview each of the study’s three phases.

Phase 1: Weeks 0-5 – Building Strength: Knowledge Skills and Practice

The focus of this phase is to get familiar with how building strength works, and to build up to that 35minutes a day.

Week 0 – all prep: participants get familiar with the app that’s guiding the study; option to come to a welcome meeting on Teams; prep for week 1 in that meeting
Week 1 is 7 minutes of strength work a day
Week 2–5: we add 7 minutes a day, each week, to get to 35 minutes a a day/week

A sketch of the study design’s 3 phases

Participants in this phase will
– gain experience of strength principles, and of how to put those principles into practice.
– Will learn and try out strength concepts like intensity, waves, volume, isometrics, bi and uni lateral movements, planes of motion, balance – no equipment, no gym required (but all participants will have the opportunity to purchase main kit at cost from our partners or at significant discounts, if they wish).

Phase 2: Weeks 6-9
– Interleaving Resistance Strength With Aerobic Strength

Weeks 6-8 – will introduce Aerobic strength as a complement resistance strength practice for optimal wellbeing benefit. We’ll look at (and practice) patterns for blending these two approaches.

BONUS: Participants will also be invited to visit the Gym (for free) for sessions its offering specifically for our study participants to have the opportunity to learn how to translate their body weight exercises to free weights, should they so choose.

Participants from this phase will learn about:
– WHY it works to blend aerobic and resistance strength (from immune function, to fat burning, to cognitive and social wellbeing);
– WHAT are aerobic options and principles to go with resistance, and
– HOW to put these strength types together.

Phase 3: Weeks 10-16 – How Thirty-five as New Normal is Going

With 8 weeks of skills building, practice and resilience under your belts, for this final half of the study, our main goal is to work with you to understand how you are making strength-in-work “normal”. Participants will be invited in the app to explore strength+aerobic patterns for two week blocks; they’ll be invited to maintain that template for the next two weeks or try a different one.

STUDY WRAP

At the end of this study we’ll have an Open Review session (party?) to reflect on what we’ve all learned from this exploration – both what works and what could use work – towards rolling this approach out more broadly for the university.

Overall BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS

  • FEEL BETTER STRONGER FASTER, More Resilient, Smarter, Nicer, (your loved ones will love you more – probably).
  • Test out the claims that building strength builds energy and joy
  • Have the TIME to explore strength – while you work
  • Get stronger, have more energy, feel better and literally SEE options better.
  • Learn skills and and have the time to practice these skills in order to be able to build and maintain your strength practices for the rest of your lives
  • Gain insight into how such practices affect work engagement
  • Contribute to research in two ways:
    • to help guide university strategy for health and wellbeing, as per VC support
    • contribute to international research on how to design tools to support strength-in-work in a scalable way
  • contribute to creating your own team’s health cultures – to create insight into how strength-in-work can work in different ways in different contexts.

IF you’d like a little motivation, scroll to the bottom part of this page so see the many ways a little strength work makes your whole life better, forever. Hormones, Sleep, Mood — everything.

You are not Alone – the App lets you Create your own Teams

How does being part of a community with the same goal help your practice?

There’s a lot of research that shows doing these kinds of explorations with people you know can be really beneficial – even when far apart – and that folks tend to sustain their practice longer when they have connections with a group.

We will have three kinds of group support you can choose to use: Add team members to your Exploration; connect on the Strength In Work Pilot Team; join the weekly LIVE sessions with your questions/observations.

ALL ABILITIES AND EXPERIENCES WELCOME

This fact is really really important: our approach is designed to work with all levels of experience and abilities. Our approach is designed for strength newcomers and experienced athletes alike. We also invite all levels of ability and mobility. Please do not self-select yourself out because you’re too whatever too you think to join in. As Green Eggs and Ham says “try it try it, you will like it, you will see!”

Really. There’s no move that can’t be adapted to improve capacity – we even have movement for eye muscles, and simple head turns as part of the program.

And if you already have a strength program – please join us, too – we’ll show you how your experience works in with the questions we’re exploring to help make work better for all. WE NEED YOU! – all of us are members of this university community.

Small print: (1) Commit to REGULAR DATA CAPTURE about your practice. As part of participation, Participants are asked to use the app to log their practice – and to use the protocols in the app. We also ask for regular assessments of strength and daily reflections on how you feel – these are guided and in many places automatic, but this anonymous tracking is key to the study.
(2) Control Condition Participants if for some reason you would like to be involved but NOT do the physical part of the study, we have an offer here too: do the daily data capture / reflections and regular assessments prompted in app- and you’ll be part of a “Control” condition – the folks who do not do the intervention but offer a great comparison – we’ll learn from your experiences too. We’ll only be able to take on as many controls as we have strength participants, so please sign up, select control, and we’ll confirm participation as soon as we have the data on strength numbers.

Ethics and Data Assurance: Our study is registered with the University. You can click here to see the study terms so there are no surprises when you download the app. We’ll post the same document in the app, so by using the app signifies you’re ok with these terms for engagement. Main thing: your participation is managed by a user ID in the app that is separate from your email and any posts you make to the study Team. So your participant data is ALL ANONYMOUS – unlinked from your personal data.

Sign Up Here

Please use the form below to sign up before Oct 26. After the 26th, we’ll send you a link to the app for the study. We ask that you download that app. On Nov. 1, we begin! Week 1 is a prep week to explore the app, learn about the study and check out how to get ready to slot in your first practice week with a Push and a Pull for 7 minutes a day.

SOME EXAMPLES of WHY strength – no matter age or starting point

Most folks get the Get Strong, Get Lean, Get Buff – yes – and there are many examples of these effects everywhere we look.

But what we may not get is that (1) strength is for everyone, at any time, any age (2) strength as a PRACTICE is something that pays off all life long.
The following are some examples of benefits beyond the typical 20’s something zone that is more well known.

WOMEN heading towards Menopause: Just a few of the latest research papers showing significant benefits from strength work for mitigating menopausal symptoms:
– Resistance training for hot flushes in postmenopausal women: A randomised controlled trial
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31239119/
Conclusion: A 15-week resistance-training program decreased the frequency of moderate and severe hot flushes among postmenopausal women and could be an effective and safe treatment option to alleviate vasomotor symptoms.

Strength training and body composition in middle-age women
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28181774/
Conclusions: The more days, time, and effort women devote to strength training, the lower their body fat and the higher their fat-free mass tend to be. A significant portion of the differences in body composition seems to result from lifters participating in more physical activity than non-lifters. Menopause status also contributes significantly to the relationship.

Effect of resistance training with elements of stretching on body composition and quality of life in postmenopausal women
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27095955/
Conclusions: Resistance training with elements of stretching in postmenopausal women improved body composition to achieve a reduction in risk factors associated with excess fatty tissue and muscle mass deficiency. It raises the quality of life in terms of both physical and mental function.

And for men – the type of approach we’ll be using is good for upping your muscle mass in terms of hormonal triggering
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31240397/
Effects of upper-body, lower-body, or combined resistance training on the ratio of follistatin and myostatin in middle-aged men
Conclusions: Both UB and LB increase muscle mass and alter the F: M ratio; however, the change in these endocrine markers is approximately twice as large if UB and LB is combined. The endocrine response to RT of myostatin and follistatin may depend on the volume of muscle mass activated during training.

AND Generally – SLEEP
The effect of resistance exercise on sleep: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28919335/
Chronic resistance exercise improves all aspects of sleep, with the greatest benefit for sleep quality.


These are just a FEW of the examples of the benefits of resistance/strength training.

See you soon