Why Do You Exercise?

Everybody knows that you should do exercise to be healthy and fit.

The most important question you can ask yourself is why do you exercise?

Understanding the true purpose of exercise is pivotal for your overall health and longevity. Are you simply going through the motions out of obligation, or do you grasp the profound impact it can have on enriching your life experiences?

Do you feel obliged to do it because you “know you should” and to compensate for lifestyle choices that are adding to the deterioration of your health?

Or do you understand that exercise is about maintaining your physical fitness and wellbeing to enhance, support and add to your life experience…for the duration of your life.

Organic v Artificial Movement

The human body hasn’t changed that much over time but what we do to it certainly has!

Our modern lifestyle has drowned out any connection that we innately had to the natural grace and rhythm of human movement.

We are all born with the ability to just “know” how to move. That’s how we learn to crawl, then walk and run.

This is organic movement.

Movement we don’t have to think about, it feels natural and normal for the body to do. We still must work to develop this organic movement, learning to walk doesn’t happen overnight.

There’s lots of wobbling and falling over until the muscles develop enough strength to get the job done.

Fast forward a few decades and as an adult, instead of developing this organic movement, we get caught up in our technological modern life that involves sitting and inactivity as it’s foundation.

So what do we do?

Start an “exercise program” to get fit and healthy? This is a great start, but there needs to be more to it than that.

The first step in starting an exercise program is to choose what type of exercise you’re going to do. It needs to be an activity that rebuilds your organic movement ability rather than artificially working the body.

An example of artificially working the body would be going to the gym and doing cardio on the equipment, probably while watching the tv screens because it’s boring right?

There’s no development or connection or progression of this inbuilt movement capability that we all have.

So how you exercise is just as important as why you exercise.

Aging is something that every single person will experience!

Your body will degenerate as it gets older.

But…

Just like you plan for your financial future, you need to plan for your physical future and understand that movement isn’t something you do for weeks, or even years.

It’s a lifetime commitment that exists for as long as you do!

Financially savvy people accumulate money over time and get the benefit of the compounding interest.

Fitness savvy people accumulate organic movement over a life time and benefit from strength, mobility, vitality and function for the duration of their lives.

Pilates is an exercise method that is based on organic movement, it’s one of the reasons it feels so great to practice it. Joseph Pilates was passionate about keeping our natural organic movements we have as children throughout our entire lifetime.

 “We should be able to work until we are 70 and play until we are 100”

So before you start an “exercise program” have a think about why you want to do it and if it’s going to add to your bank of lifetime of accumulated organic movement