The New Approach To Fitness

The real challenge now is how and when to fit this potentially unwieldy thing called exercise into your already hectic life. It does continue trip up millions of us daily, don’t forget, so we must be doing something wrong.
For an exercise program to succeed in becoming a permanent and worthwhile endeavor, it’s going to have to do two things:

1) lt’s going to hove to fit comfortably into your life.

2) We going to have to work.

A do-or-die approach to exercise is as doomed to fail as even the most diligent use of something electronic to shrink the thighs. So often fitness programs don’t last because we undertake them aiming for a Mercedes, and lose interest when it becomes clear that all we may have time for is a Honda.

To which we say: A Honda beats whatever heap is currently transporting your bones around. Research continues that even a little exercise, so long as it’s don’t consistently, can be significantly better than no exercise at all. That’s basically all the motivation you should need. The rest — actually fitting that exercise into your life — is going to be up to you.

If there’s one key ingredient that’s been lacking in the ways exercise has been sold in years past, it has been permission to exercise the imagination. There’s been an abundance of encouragement and instruction to exercise our biceps, triceps, and abs, that’s for sure, but too often it has been given within guidelines that are restrictive to the point of being prohibitive. Do we really need a 2,000•pound weight machine to work our peers, or something available for three “easy” payments in tighten our tummies?

Of course not. lt’s the movement that counts, not machinery, and there are far more ways to get that movement than would be economically wise for manufacturers of exercise devices to admit.

The same holds true for the time normally recommended for exercise, and for the attire. Exercise for at least 30 minutes within a target heart rate, we’re told. Wear Lycra because it breathes.

As long as you’re breathing, that’s what matters. lt’s time we stopped making exercise so needlessly and extravagantly complicated.