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Fitness InformationFit for What?
by:
Tanja Gardner
Copyright 2005 Tanja Gardner
Unless we’re talking simply about our bodies, and the figure of exercise they can do, we ordinarily talk simply about being fit in relation to something. An object is ‘fit for use’, covering is ‘fit to be worn at work’, and food is ‘fit to be eaten’. My parents used to have a running joke that they were fit – fit to drop! Everything else is fit 'for something'. So why do we insist on describing ourselves as ‘fit’ or ‘unfit’ without relating the concepts to thing
else?
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
It’s a basic truth that the human body wasn’t ready-made to sit still for any length of time. We spent tens of thousands of years evolving in an environment that required us to come – to find shelter, to catch food, and to support ourselves safe from predators. We’ve only been living lifestyles that allow us to be inactive
for the lesser part of a hundred years – not nearly enough time for evolution to adapt our bodies to this new environment. We see this perpetually
mirrored
in modern rates of heart disease, atherosclerosis, chronic aches and pains, and muscular and bone deterioration in folk who have become inactive as they age.
On top of this, activity has a really real effect on several stress and energy levels. Our bodies have a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ way with energy – if we don't perpetually
use and then replace energy (with activity, followed by rest and nice nutrition), we start noticing our energy levels bit by bit exhausting away. We feel tired, lethargic, and as although any figure of effort is simply too more to be worth it. And if we’re likewise under stress – for example, at work, or in a difficult relationship – we feel the energy loss and the stress even as more intensely.
These are general principles that seem to be true whoever we are. But several lifestyles require several amounts of energy, and exact several prices in terms of stress. We enjoy doing, and our bodies are suited for, several kinds of activity. It does sense then, that the figure and type of activity that wish help us reach our optimum fitness, wish be different.
DIFFERENT STROKES
If that’s the case, then effort ‘fit’ without a frame of reference seems like a insignificant concept. Unless we cognize what we want to be ‘fit for’ – what fitness means to us – there’s no reason for us to get or stay that way. If my life is essentially calm, quiet and easy-flowing, and I’m quite happy to support it that way, my ‘optimum fitness’ is going to be really several to causal agency who’s discovered a deep fulfillment in setting themselves a goal and achieving it. Causal agency who’d simply like to go for a walk with friends without effort puffed is going to have a several optimum fitness level to causal agency who wants to learn how it feels to stop a marathon.
On top of this, what folk want often changes over time. Mayhap at one point in your life, you enjoyed defrayment a couple of hours a day exercising, but now you’re finding there are things you’d like to do far more with that time. Alternatively, once
you 1st started creating your optimum life for yourself, it strength
have been enough for you to simply support your body healthy. As you tried new activities though, you strength
have discovered you were really enjoying several of them for their own sake, and wanting to get fitter so you could do more of them. So at several times in your life, you’d have a several optimum fitness level.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE “FIT FOR”?
Which brings us back to our innovational question – can we talk simply about being fit, without knowing what exactly we’re ‘fit for’? The way we see it, your optimum fitness level depends altogether on what you want to be able to do in your daily life, how you want to be feeling, how more energy you’d like to have and how exercise fits in with the rest of your life. So your 1st step in moving closer to optimum fitness of necessity
to be to do that all-important decision “What do I want to be fit for?”
Just simply about the author:
Optimum Life's Tanja Gardner is a Stress Management Coach and Personal Trainer whose articles on holistic health, relaxation and spirituality have appeared in various media since 1999. Optimum Life is dedicated to providing fitness and stress management services to help clients all over the earth bring home the bacon their optimum lives. For more information please visit check out http://optimumlife.co.nz,or contact Tanja on tanja@optimumlife.co.nz.
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