No drug, vitamin, mineral, or herb delivers as many health benefits as exercise. That’s quite a statement, isn’t it? Exercise, combined with rest and sleep, pretty much improves any of your daily activities, your health and helps you age gracefully.
But with the dizzying array of exercises available, which one to choose? How do you stick with your exercise plan through the dire winter days, when you’d rather watch a movie on the couch, when anything sound more interesting that putting on your running shoes?
A recent study from the American College of Sports Medicine predicts that strength training will remain the top exercise program in 2011, followed closely by core training. Group training programs like boot camps and Zumba are becoming increasingly popular, while exercisers are losing interest in the precision exercises like Pilates and ball training.
It’s important to do exercise that will engage you and eventually become a pleasurable part of your day. One way of doing this is to hit two parts of the wheel of health with one activity. We’re all familiar with the idea of linking exercise to personal development. People flock to running, triathlons, and marathons as a way to pull strength and endurance from themselves.
If you’re a social person, the idea of moving from machine to machine in a gym probably bores you silly. If your relationships are important to you in your regular life, try strengthening your social network with group classes. A local gym offers adventure tours for their members to insanely cool places like Morocco.
I’m reading a book right now, Sweat Your Prayers, that has a really interesting take on exercise – by linking it with spirituality. The author, Gabrielle Roth, dances as a way to connect with her spirit and to the greater meaning of life. A client at Duke also needed to find the link between movement and meaning. She was very resistant to all types of exercise, feeling that it was a selfish use of her time. When she tied it to serving others – helping kids at a horse therapy farm – she was doing more exercise than any doctor could have ever talked her into.
I am going to enjoy my environment with a new activity for me this summer – paddle boarding. It will satisfy my love of nature and be an incredible core workout at the same time. For people looking to combine their mind-body connection to exercise, there are a lot of great options. Yoga, tai chi, qi gong – all soothing, calming and very effective at developing mindfulness through exercise. There is another great resource for developing mindfulness in any sport – Working Out, Working Within. Co-written by a sports coach and an authority on the Tao, it’s a meditation on seeing physical activity as a way to restore total oneness and create harmony among body, mind and spirit.
The key to capture the long-term benefits of exercise lies in knowing yourself, understanding your most important values and linking everything together to a pleasurable (eventually!) activity. Happy hunting!