By Paul Chek, HHP, NMTFounder, C.H.E.K Institute
Walk down the street or through any shopping mall and ask anyone above the age of six if they believe that exercise good for them and you're sure to get the intelligent answer, "Of course!"
Why? Because we all know intuitively exercise is good for us. Even so, we can't seem to bring ourselves to do it as a whole. Only 8 percent of men and 3 percent of women do any regularly scheduled exercise!
As a man in love with the life process and very well informed as to the necessity of exercise for physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health, it is my sincere desire to share one of the methods I've learned in my career regarding how to make exercise work for you.
Get Excited About Your Goals!
Before you start any kind of gym routine or workout program, it is always important to set some sort of goals (other than just exercising itself). If you don't have a reason to go the gym, you'll never feel any real sense of accomplishment and, absent any sense of accomplishment, it's going to be hard to enjoy your routine or stick to it.
Setting a goal also helps you to track your progress. And, just as the sight of the finish line gives a runner the strength to make the final dash at the end of a race, as you get closer to achieving your goal, you'll feel more drive to go the gym.
Also, when you have a goal in mind, it is much easier to choose exercise types as well as exercises. For example, if you want to lose weight and improve your body shape, contrary to popular belief, I would recommend resistance training, not cardiovascular exercise. Resistance training builds muscle, which has the highest metabolic rate of all our tissues.
The more muscles you have, the more calories you burn, even when resting!
Cardiovascular training does the opposite -- taking muscle off your body. This is particularly related to the fact prolonged steady state type cardiovascular exercise stimulates high levels of stress hormones called glucocorticoids. Glucocorticoids are antagonistic to strength and muscle development.
Sprinting, on the other hand, can have the opposite effect because it stimulates anabolic or tissue-building hormones, provided your sprinting program is properly designed. The difference in exercise types explains why distance runners and sprinters have different bodies. Distance runners are so skinny because their sport is antagonistic to building muscle, while sprint training is anabolic resulting in the heavily muscled sprinter's body.
Geography is No Excuse
Don't let the fact that you don't have a gym near you or that you may be unfamiliar with a gym get in the way of setting fitness goals either! Both of these problems are easy to fix.
If you don't live close to a gym, you can reach your goals with a few simple pieces of equipment like the Swiss ball and a bit of knowledge. If you read my How To Eat Move & Be Healthy, you will find a whole collection of exercises almost all of which make use of basic equipment you can get delivered to your home.
My video, Swiss Ball Exercises for Better Abs, Buns and Backs (see link below), is also a great resource for achieving your fitness goals using a Swiss ball at home. If you want to improve your strength and stamina at work, or for most sports such as soccer, hockey, touch football, tennis, basketball, volleyball, or even golf, you could go a long way toward your goals with my videos Swiss Ball Exercises for Athletes and Paul Chek's Medicine Ball Workout (see links below).
These aforementioned videos have workout routines outlined in them and require only a Swiss Ball (some of the advanced exercises require two Swiss Balls) or a medicine ball or two.
Finally, if you do live by a gym but are a novice in weight training, I recommend my Gym Instructor video series (see link below). If you studied these videos alone, you would be as effective in the gym as most personal trainers today.
Because there is no regulation on personal trainer education, many trainers get their certification over the Internet. This isn't a great idea if you want to be a professional or you're going to be trained by one.
Variety Makes Exercise Fun
Once you've set your goal, you need to make achieving it fun. For some of us, exercise is an exciting part of our day. Those who love to exercise typically know enough about exercise and know enough exercises to keep it interesting.
But if you do anything repetitively without variety, it gets old pretty quick. That's the sticking point for lots of people, especially if you aren't an athlete or experienced in the gym.
So to keep motivated, you need to be able achieve your goals using a variety of different methods to keep your workout routine interesting. Now you may be saying, "but I don't know how to do anything in a gym and I'm not an athlete." That's OK. We can apply the variety principle to any activity, such as walking. The following is just a short list of the ways you can make walking more enjoyable:
If you don't have much of an exercise aptitude due simply to lack of exposure, there are many things that you can do. To begin with, most gyms have a variety of classes going on these days and the methods of exercise range from the soft and less invasive -- yoga and Pilates methods -- all the way to cardio kickboxing.
There are also now more exercise toys and tools than ever before as well. As I mentioned earlier, the Swiss ball (Figure 1) is great piece of equipment that can be used in all sorts of ways. You can also incorporate medicine balls (Figure 2), wobble boards (Figure 3), functional exercise machines like the Pro Fitter (Figure 4), not to mention the virtual smorgasbord of cardiovascular conditioning machines. The Concept 2 rowing machine (Figure 5), for example, gives you a great full body workout in as little as 15-20 minutes a day.
Many of these toys are inexpensive, can be delivered to your home and can provide fun exercise alternatives to avoid boring repetition in your routine.
With a little training from some of the videos I described above, you'll be able to build yourself enough exciting, safe and functional programs to keep you in the gym for years. Finally, as your goals progress, a CHEK Practitioner can help you to meet these new challenges while keeping your workouts fresh and functional (visit the C.H.E.K Institute Web site for a practitioner near you).
So to keep yourself in the gym remember this simple formula: Set a goal, and make getting there fun! Add a little variety to your workouts, and you'll find yourself getting results that you never thought possible before.
To make exercise work better for you, I recommend the following CHEK Products:
Paul Chek, Holistic Health Practitioner and certified Neuromuscular Therapist, is the founder of the C.H.E.K Institute in Vista, Calif. A sought-after consultant to sports organizations, his services have benefited numerous professional sports teams, athletes and individuals seeking optimal health worldwide. Paul has produced more than 60 videos, 17 correspondence courses and is the author of several books, audio programs and articles.
For a free C.H.E.K Institute product catalog, information about his seminars, certification courses or private consultation, you may call 800/552-8789 (U.S.), 800/552-8789 (New Zealand or Australia), 44 (0)1273-856-860 (Great Britain) and 011-45-28-14-5131 (Denmark) or visit his Web site.
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The Swiss Ball Circuit
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