The Exercise Manifesto

Let's talk about exercise a bit.

There are more misconceptions about exercise than there are about pretty much everything.  Except dieting.  And that's for another day.

You've got your joggers.  Life is running. 

I used to run.  It's easy and cheap.  A good pair of running shoes is all that you absolutely have to have.  What you wear is most of the time irrelevant.

I was never a "runner." I never had to get my run in.  The only runner's high I ever had may have been due to a beer after a run.

But still I ran.  Until my knees forsook me.

You've got your weight lifters. 

The worst of the kind spend hours in the gym.  They spend more time resting between sets than they do actually exercising.

You've got your cardio kings (or queens).

They have their favorite cardio equipment in their favorite gym that they do regularly in what I suppose must be their favorite time of day.  Wearing their favorite gym duds.

I've seen people on the same piece of equipment regularly for years.  Nothing ever changes.

Some people have got to play something.  If there isn't a competition to it or some kind of game, they just won't do it.  My thing used to be basketball.   I LOVED playing basketball.  I was a Basketball Jones.

For some people it is tennis.  I used to play that too but life got in the way. 

OK, so I'm going to do something that will seem really odd.  Something that will violate every code of creative writing ever written.

I'm going to offer you the conclusion in this, the middle of the piece.

Here it is:  The best exercise program is the one that you do.

You may have discovered the most perfect exercise program in the world.  You may have found exactly what works for you.

But if you don't do it, it won't help you a bit.

Everybody is different.  And every body is different. 

What works for one person may not work for you at all.  You've got to find their niche.  Your "thing."

Oh, there are certain basic principles that you've got to folllow.

You've got to do some things that get your heart rate up.  I'll not get into the argument right now about target heart rate and how high your heart rate needs to be in order to derive benefit from the exercise but do remember this--from time to time, you've got to exercise hard enough that you can't carry on a conversation. 

Not every time.  Not all the time.  Sometimes.

Of course that depends on medical clearance and all that.  If you're past 40, make sure your personal physician approves.  (Oh...you don't have a personal physician?  Well goodness gracious, get one!)

You've got to do some things that put some stress on your muscles.

I am of the strongly held opinion that you don't need to do strength training of just one muscle or muscle group. 

Your strength training needs to be multi-joint and it needs to be functional.

What does it mean to be multi-joint?   It means that you need to be doing exercises that involve more than one joint.

A good example is the power clean.  Great exercise.  It engages your legs, hips, back, shoulders...pretty much your whole body.

A bad example is the biceps curl.  Or the bench press.  And goodness knows that the machine where you just sit and kick forward is a waste of time.

Why do we lift weights?

We lift (well, most of us anyway) to make sure that our body is strong enough to do the other things that we want to do. 

Some people lift to train for a specific sport.  For some, it is important for their job (think firefighters and EMT's).   For a lot people, we lift weights because we sit at a desk in front of a computer for long periods of time every day.

Strength training is the best (and I could argue ONLY) way to combat that.

I don't know of many people any more that lift weights just to look good.  No doubt that is true for some but then you get past your teenage years and then what is the point?

Get the picture?  We lift for solid, functional reasons.  

We lift to combat aging.   We lift so we can climb the stairs.  Or carry a child out of a burning building.  Or even play with the kids (or grandkids).

There are a million reasons that we exercise.

We exercise to be healthier, happier, and live longer.  When you get down to it, that's about it.

Why do you exercise?

Or maybe I should ask...why don't you?