What Is Exercise?
What is an exercise?
Nature never designed us to sit still for hours at a time in cars, at desks, on couches. Which is why exercising is so important.
A physical exercise is something that challenges the body; indeed it is any process that stimulates the cells of the body to change. The stimulation can affect any part of your anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, including muscles, bones and hormones, to name just a few. It can even be a great antidote to the huge stresses of modern lifestyle.
The stimulation comes from applying external forces which create an internal resistance to challenge our muscles. Scientific research demonstrates that how forces are applied to your body, combined with other variables like time and intensity, can make dramatic differences to the results you achieve – maintaining, enhancing or even demoting your muscular skeletal health. Which is why it’s so important to calculate the optimum level of resistance.
| Maintain
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Enhance
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Demote
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When exercise maintains the current health of our bodies, enough stimulation is available to prevent our muscle cells from atrophy. This may be the best choice for a particular day. For example, when you feel tired. |
This includes results that we typically expect and want, like an increase in muscle tone and size, or a reduction in body fat. Other results include improved oxygen uptake and use, increased bone density and better hormone regulation. |
This includes results that we want to avoid, like pain, injury, increased body fat, fatigue, lowered immunity, limited joint motion, poor mental state and the start of premature ageing. Exercise in excess can be harmful to our bodies. |
Remember, appropriate stimulation will vary with circumstances, and indeed, depending on your threshold, the stimulation may need to change with every workout. Factors like sleep, nutrition, and emotion must also be considered to avoid poor results.
What’s also needed is to take into account the different anatomical structures and different neurological and biochemical thresholds of each person’s body, as an exercise that is suitable for one person can be detrimental to another person.
Why is this relevant?
Many people exercise for the simple reason that they think exercise is beneficial. But the wrong exercises can increase muscle imbalances, thus damaging your health instead of improving it (see our section on this here) , and over exercising will usually do you more harm than good. Unless you, your trainer or the gymnasium, understand and apply the principles outlined above, achieving the results you want could be extremely haphazard, and possibly even damaging.
At Life Activation we believe exercise is a lifetime process. We have the knowledge and understanding to ensure the best for you with every exercise, and every workout, utilizing two very powerful tools: Muscle Activation Techniques™ and the Resistance Training Specialist® program.
To find out more click on the links, or contact us to make an appointment in which we can assess with you the best ways to achieve your exercise goals.
