Being “fit” means different things to different people, and it does depend on your current level of activity.
Sometimes, when we do not achieve the results we hope for we begin to wonder whether “fitness” is a fairytale….
What does Shaping-UP mean?
Physical Fitness encompasses five components of health.
- Cardiorespiratory endurance: The ability to have your cardiovascular and respiratory systems function well during exercise. Mainly, the ability to carry on a conversation without being hugely winded.
- Muscular Endurance: The ability of your muscles to perform repetitive tasks over time.
- Muscular Strength: The ability to use your muscles to their fullest extent in your daily life.
- Flexibility: The ability to move your body’s joints throughout a full range of motion.
- Body Composition: Refers to your lean body mass to body fat ratio.
Many fitness programs focus only on weight loss, and unfortunately weight loss is not a necessary component of fitness and body composition is only one fifth of the fitness equation.
A weight loss focus often leads to disappointment and abandonment of the effort it takes to Shape-Up.
Fitness is a focus on ability
We saw this week the mastering of a technically tricky manoeuvre of the kettle bells. With it came an ability to use the hips and backside to move the weight. We saw many smiles of personal achievement this week!
Learning different movement patterns like the kettlebell swing is necessary for regenerating and maintaining fitness.
The ability to use your backside reduces strain on the knees by building muscle and controlling the speed of the swing with your gluteal muscles conditions the heart.
We are all born to move with what we have, as babies we begin with the conditioning of our abdominal muscles, coordinating our breath with a diaphragmatic contraction to produce an exploding force of sound.
While it’s hard to convince a new mother that her baby is “working out” it is a marvellous feat of survival that a newborn can exercise enormous cardiorespiratory endurance!
A focus on ability is essential to improving fitness; the starting point is what you can do and then progress at a pace that feels natural and comfortable.
“Natural and comfortable” is not “a walk in the park.”
We have evolved to move with purpose, thereby strengthening and sharpening our skills for survival, rarely did our ancestors have the time for exercise.
Our modern lifestyle is no different, many of us do not have the time for exercise, but we do need the skills to move effectively and efficiently through life.
Our Shape-UP program will equip you with the first four fitness abilities and help you achieve a healthy body composition, which is the fifth component of fitness.
If you haven’t joined us this year in class, and you are feeling reluctant because your fitness isn’t what it was, please be assured, regaining fitness is simply a matter of restarting your fitness practice.
I leave you this week with an adaptation of Dan Brown’s quote of achieving the “impossible.”
Dan Brown’s book, “The Da Vinci Code” is essentially a treasure hunt, using “fairy tales” and a Mona Lisa smile.
Writers, artist, and we exercisers share the skill of creativity, using what is possible to find the “impossible” treasure of enduring health and happiness in our lifetime.
“Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer.”
Live well and eat well!
Anna
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