When I suggest you improve your fitness, what image flashes through your mind?
I imagine it’s a hard and fast workout which leaves you gasping for breath and dripping with sweat on the floor.
It seems that these types of workouts have become what it means to be fit.
And if this is how you think you have to exercise if you want to lose weight and get fit, then I have excellent news for you – these kinds of workouts are not essential!
Often I find myself conveying the importance of resistance exercise, and this is because resistance exercise is repeatedly shown to have the most rounded overall positive effects for health and fitness.
It is also because resistance exercise tends to be the most overlooked, or mis-interpreted.
Sometimes, the resistance programs I write for you will ask you to have a little sit down between exercises, and other times, they’ll get you pretty out of breath.
If your aim is to be fit overall and have a well functioning body, then there IS a place for getting out of breath – although perhaps not to the stage encouraged by many of these mega intense workout routines (unless you love it, of course, then it becomes a different question).
Lately, I’ve had several conversations with several clients who have a history of diligently slogging through these hard and fast workouts.
We’ve discussed how approaching exercise differently is likely to be the key to reaching their fitness, weight loss, posture and pain related goals.
Exercising, or structuring your routine, in a different way may just unlock the fitness goals you’re looking for.
Exercising for the after effects of the workout rather than the calorie burn during the workout could well get the scales moving.
Taking time to listen to what your body is telling you is hugely valuable, especially when you’re aiming to reduce pain and improve your energy.
Focusing on moving correctly is going to improve your posture and reduce your pain more quickly than trying to do as much as you can as quickly as you can.