Today I’m going to be Captain Obvious. When it comes to fitness, it helps to know why we are doing it. Among other things, it saves time.
Let’s imagine that we’ve been lolling around on the couch for a month, doing not a whole lot because, after all, there are eleventy-teen seasons of CSI we can watch again. Maybe we realize we’re tired all the time, or the biggest pair of sweat pants is feeling a little tight, or that twinge in the lower back isn’t going away. And maybe then we realize that we probably should do some working out. But what should we do?
It depends.
I am going to assume that we’re all in basically good health with no obvious contraindications for exercise—we just haven’t been doing it. We might have a variety of different goals that would suggest different kinds of fitness routines.
Take, for example, that feeling tired all the time thing. At first glance, it might seem that exercising to fix that is counterintuitive. However, cardio exercise improves sleep quantity and quality, so we will end up less tired. Additionally, fatigue can be a symptom of depression and cardio can lift our mood significantly.
The sweat pants? That’s a combo plate: we want cardio to burn calories and weight training to increase lean body mass.
The lower back pain? We might want to think about some core work and some flexibility, like in Pilates. Pilates improves posture, too.
I’m not able to see my clients in person right now, so anybody who wants some specific ideas for what to do should shoot me a comment/email/text/call and I’ll hook you up with some thoughts.
Captain Obvious out.