Be strong – Move Freely
Being fit, flexible AND STRONG was and is integral to human evolution. Fundamentally it’s achieved, sustained and enhanced through movement. We are designed to Simply Move!™ because movement is intrinsic to what it is to be human. Yet we live in a world centred around sitting, with any number of devices steering us to move less and less.
Without regularly repeating movements that resist and load your body, strength is lost. Without reserves of strength, your ability to be dextrous, dynamic and resilient, erodes. Add in the natural loss as your birthdays accumulate, the picture of a vibrant healthy body can become grainy.
The net result leaves your body vulnerable to “Strain Drain and Pain”.
~ Strain on your body
~ Drain on your reserves
~ Pain in your body.
However…
If your strength was NEVER your strength, so to speak, your potential for building strength is untapped. If you have never actively worked on it, your limit is unknown. Discover your limit and progress from this to become stronger, safely.
Protecting joints
Strength helps you perform every day activities more easily while protecting your body. Without it your joints and muscles are exposed to disproportionate strain and tension placed upon them.
If your muscles haven’t the reserves on hand when you push, pull and lift through life, your joints absorb the strain. A stronger body helps distribute any load throughout your entire musculature.
Protecting your muscles
Building strength protects the amount of muscle you have (the mass) in terms of increasing it and then maintaining it. It also helps tone your muscles (the firmness) as well. This means you can reduce the sagging effect that rudely sneaks up on us all.
Achieve greater dexterity and agility
Building strength safely and effectively does not require a military boot camp mentality.
In fact quite the reverse. To Simply Move!™ is to be more intuitive, to listen to your body and to do what feels right for you. Start off with the familiar and the known (a book, brick, door stop, ornament). With a daily task typically you only undertake one or two repetitions and possibly those repetitions are carried out fairly intermittently. However, with what I am suggesting, the strengthening effect comes from the consistent repetition as outlined below.
If you are unsure about using weights to improve your health, follow the videos using no weights in your hands. Just get used to the movement. Then hold an every day item you know you can lift, as you perform the movements. As you become stronger, which you will, steadily increase the weight you hold.
Move WITH your body as opposed to doing exercises TO it.
~ Tune into your body
~ Connect with the muscles engaging
~ Move with control and flow
~ Breathe
~ repeat until you tire without feeling completely spent. (This may only be a handful of repetitions. If you’re starting out finish with more left in reserve YOU CAN ALWAYS DO MORE in time. Better that than wishing you’d done less.)
Safely build strength for a healthy body
Keep in your mind LESS IS MORE. Consistency is the key. Keep on keeping on, little and often a couple of times a week. It is this more than the weight itself, that translates into long term changes to your strength and ultimately your health.
Start today, for all your tomorrows. If you want the bigger picture of being fit flexible and strong, away from pain and stiffness, learn to Simply Move!™ in your own time, anywhere, anytime.
If you’re looking for the benefits of strengthening for bone density and other health conditions, feel free to browse other blogs I have written on this.
