Taking the Fear out of Exercise
Posted: Saturday, August 15, 2009
by Donovan Baldwin
No Diet 4 Me
Let's face it. We can use a lot of words to describe why people do not succeed with exercise programs, but the word that probably covers the most aspects is going to simply be "fear".
People are afraid to start exercising, afraid to keep on exercising, afraid to stop exercising, afraid to talk about their exercising....
Fear and pain. That's what many associate with exercise, fitness, and weight loss...because odds are that if you are thinking about exercise it's because you're gaining weight or are already heavier than you want to be.
One big cause of pain is ignorance, of course, but another, an offshoot of ignorance, is trying to do too much too fast.
Very simply, if done properly, exercise works and will produce a healthier, fitter, trimmer you. However, if you try to do too much too quickly you can actually injure yourself.
Now, when I make a statement like that, people tend to think of pulled muscles, soreness, and the after effects that we are all familiar with. The problem is that many, no, make that most, people do not realize how deeply exercise is involved in all the processes of the body!
You have to think of an exercise program as something like a road construction project. You may drive by one day and see a completed road, but first there was a grading and clearing, dirt and/or rock was trucked in and trucked out, some workers came in and did one thing, then another crew came and did something else. If you tried to build that road in one day, or if you tried to build it with one crew, or if you tried to skip some of the steps, your road, if it gets built at all, will at best be a very substandard road. And, if you are not doing the proper things in the proper manner, you will go way over budget...and the whole thing gets cancelled.
When you do your first exercise routine, you not only injure muscle fibers...relax, it's part of the process...but your heart, lungs, liver, glands, in fact almost every part of your body, begins to at least think about changing. If you don't exercise again for several days, it forgets what happened and you continue being who you were before.
If, however, you exercise again within a certain period, and then again, and so on, ALL THE SYSTEMS AND ORGANS begin to take notice and begin to make adjustments. This is work, and it is going on while you work, while you sleep, while you have sex, or play the piano. In fact, if you try to do too much too soon, you might decide that you are not in the mood to have sex or play the piano!
A lot of this occurs at a level you do not really notice, but it can be strong enough to make you feel an aversion to doing the next rep, the next exercise, or even the next workout...and you won't even be aware of WHY you feel that way!
The next thing you know, it's been two weeks since your last workout, and it seems that once more exercise just did not seem to deliver what you expected.
On the other hand, many of us expect too much!
After all, the ads say you can lose 30 pounds in 10 days! Here you've been working out for 10 weeks and have only lost a couple of pounds!
The facts are that exercise does work for fitness and weight loss, but it will take time. Rome was not built in a day, and neither were you! It will take time to readjust your body with exercise alone.
That's another point, by the way. If you exercise but continue to follow your previous lifestyle, which probably included some bad eating habits, the exercise may be, if not doomed to failure, doomed to inadequate results! Oh, you will still get healthy and lose weight, but no matter what exercises you do or how much you exercise you will not reach anything like the point you want to get to.
Again, we discover another factor. Your particular fitness and weight loss journey will depend on a great many factors, including the kinds of exercises you do, how often you do them, the intensity of your workouts, etc.
It can actually turn out to be a very complicated area, this exercise thing, and is beyond the scope of this article, although I have written others on the subject as well.
However, you can still simply choose to begin inserting small doses of exercise into your daily activities and functions, and gradually increase the intensity until you are experiencing all that can be obtained merely from exercise...which is one h*** of a lot! If I were going to recommend one lifestyle change for better health and fitness, it would be to get more exercise, followed closely by; take a daily multivitamin, watch what you eat, get eight hours of sleep a night, keep your mind as well as your body active, learn to relax, have fun, make friends, and get a pet.
There should not be a need to fear exercise. It works, but like any tool it can be misused. Misuse of tools results in accidents, damages, and injuries. Even the best tools, if not used regularly, cannot complete their tasks properly, nor on schedule. Tools not used become strangers to our hands and we lose our skill with them.
Exercise is a tool for the health of the body and mind. Use it well and it will reward you by helping you build a fine healthy body, fit and toned. However, like any construction project, you cannot probably complete the whole project in a day. Long before the first brick is laid, or the first load of cement is delivered, there must be preparations made for the edifice which is going to rise from the mud of the construction site.
Start your exercise program slowly and easily and gradually increase the challenges, and you will find that there is no need to fear exercise or associate it with pain.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Donovan Baldwin is a 64-year-young amateur bodybuilder and freelance health and fitness writer currently living in Stone Mountain, GA. He is retired from the U. S. Army after 21 years of service and is a University of West Florida alumnus (BA Accounting 1973). For several years, he has written articles on a wide range of subjects but enjoys topics related to health and fitness the most. He has a web page where you can gain access to a wide range of health and beauty products at http://nodiet4me.com/health_products .
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