April Blog 2010
NEWS:
By Clive Lindley-Jones | April 13, 2010 11:19 am
Last month I chose to focus on why we should bother with Exercise and drew your attention to more ideas and support on this on our website were I list some of the 30+ reasons why is so essential, if we want to have optimal health and full functioning of our bodies for the maximum time in our life, and more importantly help you look at ways you can make it a happy and vital part of your life from now on. Afterwards I realised that there was just too much to say on this huge subject in one, short session. So this month, we roll that topic over and look at how and why it can become so transformative and in particular how strength can give us more than we may think.
Shawn Phillips author of this month’s book of the month helpfully outlines the basis of all approaches to exercise.
(Image from Sean Phillips’ website here)
Understanding this allows one to plan out how one wants to balance activities to maximise the benefits for the cornerstones of fitness. Of course, for most of us, pressurised with commuting, work, families and time and money pressures of all kinds, this may seem just, pie in the sky.
“Chance would be a fine thing, if I could have the strength to do anything at all after the day I have had!” you might well, understandably, feel. And yet even under less than ideal circumstances one can at least use those opportunities that arise in our daily life and keep this triangle of health in mind. For those with more time/inclination this triangle becomes a useful focus or planning the kinds of activities one may want to give ones body to regularly transform it. Phillips suggests designing a year’s programme of physical activity where every quarter one changed the focus for the kind of exercise that sits at the top of the triangle getting the lions share of your efforts. So that, for example, you might spend the autumn concentrating on building strength with more of your focus on that, changing for rest, rejuvenation and variety in the spring to focus more on stretching, turning to stamina in the summer when perhaps you can get out on your bike more often and get your heart and lungs working and getting all those health giving vitamin D rays from the sunshine while you are about it. (For more on this watch this space for a further Health E-Coaching this year devoted to Vitamin D and why you are almost certainly not getting enough).