Have you ever heard of someone living to be 110 who is a regular Gym hound?
No these ancients usually live up a mountain, live off the land collect a lot of herbs and live a pretty stress free clean life.
Repetitive training for any sport or for pleasure doesn't make you healthy, it just makes you well adapted to that pursuit.
Sitting around doesn't make you healthy. Lots of the body systems are dependant upon movement, the Circulation of blood and lymph, digestion, bowel movements, bone mass, mental health, stress reduction....
A healthy body is one that can answer all the demands that you make of it and remain free of disease. It is a good place to live. A healthy body is responsive, reactive, strong and supple and has energy.
Eating appropriately is a huge part of that but this is not my special field, movement is. But the approach to healthy movement is much the same as it is to healthy eating, lots of different healthy food in lots of different combinations. So to put it in context, carrots and peas are good for you but just those are not enough. Pull ups and squats are good for you but just these are not enough.
Use your gym time to redress the imbalance caused by your lifestyle.
So if you sit all day, spend time opening the hip flexors and activating the thoracic spine, find out what your core really is, and work it. If you spend hours on a bike, spend time taking out the calf tension and the quad tension and get the rhomboids activated after all that holding. Then challenge your body with different moves and activities to get every single muscle and joint firing again.
The oldest person I knew, was a client who was 102 when she died. She hated Gym at school. It hurt. She disliked sport, she was never competitive but she was always active and had, 'no time for lazy folk, there is always something to do'. The the oldest person I know now is my mother at 91. When her much younger friends, 70+ , complain that they can't manage down the hill to the shops or they need to get their prescription delivered because they are, 'just no able'. Mother will reply, 'well of course you cant do it, you're sitting on your arse all day and you've only eaten some toast'. Mother rarely sat in her long and challenging life, she prides herself on her ability to get about and is not afraid of a challenge. I know, I take her on holiday and boy am I in trouble if I try to carry her bag!
You know that old saying, variety is the spice of life. It is also the life of movement.
Move, people, in lots of ways. Just keep challenging yourself and change it up!
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