Are your exercise habits giving you sustainable fitness?
As a personal trainer, yoga instructor and gym owner I have noticed that all the new fitness fads I see lately are encouraging people to exercise more which is good, but they also encourage you to push your body hard, increase your heart rate, sweat until your drenched and not stop until you're exhausted. Then try and function in day to day life while you rest, refuel, repair and recover all before you do it all again tomorrow. This is assisted usually by concentrated nutrients, minerals and other building blocks the body needs in the form of sports and fitness supplements that are marketed like they are the only way to achieve improvements in the pursuit of your goals.
As a trainer who cares about my own and my clients long term health and wellbeing I have to stop and ask why are we as a society doing this to ourselves? What is the point of getting fitter just to be able to work harder at getting fitter? Is this lifestyle sustainable in the long term, what will be the long term effects of this cycle of excessive exertion during exercise, are these people that are doing this going to be fit and healthy seniors in 30 or 40 years time? Or are their bodies going to break down long before then, with joint problems from all the repetitive loaded movements, heart problems from micro tears in the muscle, gut and digestion problems from all the highly processed artificial foods and supplements, maybe even brain problems from constantly over heating the body? The answers or rather effects probably wont be known for at least 10 years, but personally I don't wont to be a test subject.
So the question has got to be asked, Is the fitness industry with it's current fads of doing everything to the extreme going to create even more problems than it is trying to solve? And from the clients perspective , Does this fitness model scare off those that just want to live a little healthier?
Is there now a great divide? On one hand the elite fitness fanatic who exercises most days to extreme exertion, and then on the other those who either don't exercise or who start and stop regularly because they either injure themselves, get sick or become discouraged because they can't sustain the intensity.
Well it doesn't have to be that way, you can exercise for a sustainable long term healthy functional life by applying some of the principals of yoga to all forms of fitness, breath less, tense less, eat less, move more. Exercise can be done at a level that makes us more energised, healthier, happier, and live longer, all while making us fitter. The key to this I think is to be sensible about it, to train smarter rather than harder, to not over stress the body, and possibly the most important not to constantly put the body into a state of fight or flight which turns off our parasympathetic nervous system, and therefore turning off our immune system, digestive system, reproductive system while increasing our heart rate and breathing more than necessary.
The human body was designed to move, not just in momentarily high intensity bursts but in different and diverse ways at all sorts of different intensities with periods of rest, relaxation and recovery in the mix as well. From an evolutionary point of view the bursts of high intensity maximum exertion activities were useful for fighting or running from predators or enemies, during these times of fight, flight or freeze the body only has one function, for the muscles, reflexes, senses and survival instincts to function at their absolute peak, so to this end all the unneeded body systems simply shut down, such as digestion, reproduction, immune, repair, and some brain functions such as pain, memory, reasoning etc. Non of them are needed to fight or run for your life, the current fitness fads of over exertion are stimulating this same flight, fight or freeze response and quite often is done on a daily basis. The increased heart rate and over breathing is then in turn effecting our bodies PH levels which then needs correcting and the bodies first response to this is food, usually high protein or carbohydrate, but many people mistake this for increased metabolism from the exercise so they over exercise and then over eat, then over exercise all over again because they are not getting the results they are after. Sooner or later the body will burn out.
An alternative to this which is much more sustainable is being active everyday, moving more in varying ways from weight baring, body weight, heavy loads, light loads, repetitive, constantly varying, isolated, compound, complex, cardio vascular, stretching, relaxing, coordination and every conceivable variation in between. Moving in these ways has great effects on the body, from joint lubrication, blood flow, digestion, lymphatic system, nervous system, brain function and many other body systems rely on movement for efficient function. For example muscle contractions are actually a stronger circulatory pump than your heart, many of our joints rely on synovial fluid to function smoothly which is stimulated through movement which changes is viscosity and produces more. Our nervous system which runs throughout the whole body is stimulated by movement as they get moved within their sheaths and stimulating the movement centres of the brain. Healthy amounts of movement, especially complex movements and skills requiring coordination have been linked to increased brain function on many different levels.
Moving regularly in a calm engaged way will keep the body functioning properly, training smarter not harder can achieve at least as good a result if not better as it will be sustainable in the long term. Training in such a way that you are still challenging your body both physically and mentally while not tipping over into the fight, flight or freeze response will leave you feeling energised, alert, happy and satisfied. NOT, exhausted, tired/ lethargic, hungry and on edge or jittery/ anxious.
If your job is quite sedentary or repetitive then it is important to break it up regularly with something different, if you don't weight bare during normal activities then get to the gym, if you don't exert yourself with cardio vascular exercise then go for a run, ride, swim or take up sports regularly, if you don't stretch, relax, use body weight or coordination then go to a yoga class, if you don't challenge your self with constantly varying, complex activities go to as many different types of exercise classes as you can. Eat a sensible well balanced diet with plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables, moderate protein and carbohydrates. Be mindful of what your body is asking for as well, don't just eat because you exercised or you think you should, take note of what activities you are going to do in a day and ask yourself do you really need that much energy in your system to achieve those. If you did exert yourself more that usual in an activity look at balancing it out with a period of relaxation or meditation instead, you would be amazed that the food cravings just go away. Drink more water as well, just simple water is usually plenty for everyday, if you had some kind of endurance activity or it is a hot day where you were sweating moderately then some electrolytes may be needed.
And Eat less, breathe less, tense less, stress less, move more!
