Are You Ignoring Contributing Factors to Fitness?

Is fitness and health exclusively about exercise? Certainly one can make that argument but they often forget about other aspects of one’s life that lead to greater fitness and health. If a person jumps on the treadmill for a half hour a day they will not magically get in great shape.  Those that fail to make a connection to other needed life adjustments are unlikely to achieve their full potential. The reason? – Limited perspective that results in ignoring contributing components to improved fitness.

Fitness and health is as much a lifestyle change as it is engaging in new activities. It requires adjustments in Food & Diet, Fitness Routine, Motivation & Habit, Self-Image, and Nutrition & Fitness Knowledge.  To encourage success in your endeavors you should consider how each aspect of your health impacts your chances of success:

Food & Diet: What we eat will have an impact on our overall health. High fat and calorie laden food will continue to add to your unused energy each day. When your body reaches 3,500 calories you gain a pound and begin to add fat. Eating low calorie but highly nutritious food will help you lose weight and provide the building blocks for enhanced muscle growth. 

Fitness Routine: Fitness routine design will determine focus, speed of change, and the likelihood of injury.  The type of activities influences weight loss, muscle gain, flexibility and performance. For example, gaining muscle requires resistance training while weight loss needs more cardiovascular routines.  It is best to follow other routines or find help in developing a customized routine.

Motivation & Habit: After the New Years gyms are packed with enthusiastic fitness hobbyists that disappear after a few months. The problem is related to motivation and habit. Motivation helps get someone to the gym but habit keeps them coming back at regular intervals. 

Self-Image Development: How we view ourselves will have an impact on our fitness levels, the body image we project, and sustaining motivation. Developing a self-image that is associated with fitness, exercise, sports, etc. will help integrate proper fitness behaviors that are relied on throughout the week.

Nutrition & Fitness Knowledge:  A lack of knowledge can regularly lead to fitness failure. Learning about how the body works, exercise movements, food choices, and sports hobbies encourages greater knowledge for proper fitness choices.

Walking as a Fitness Augmentation to Sporting Activities

Those who engage in high intensity sports like self-defense, running, fencing, dance or anything else love to push their bodies to the limits in terms of cardiovascular exertion, flexibility, and pace. There are times when simply augmenting a regular fitness routine with walking is a benefit to both recovery as well as future growth. All bodies must slow down for a short time to regenerate and prepare for better performance in the near future. Walking is one way to stay active while still affording an opportunity to continue conditioning for peak performance. 

Let us assume that you had a rigorous week engaging in one of your sporting routines. You pushed your body to the limit and you have that achy feeling that lasts past 2 days, thirsty, and lethargic that may indicate that you are over trained (1). You will need some time to recover but don’t want to sit on the couch for days on end. You may want to consider walking as an alternative until your body recovers. 

Besides recovery, walking can also improve coordination, balance, health, weight loss, and bone strength (2). Therefore, your time at rest is not really at rest but refocusing on different aspects of your body. This is helpful in balancing your sports routine to ensure that you are not overly redundant on a single movement or activity that leads to injury. 

Walking should be brisk, raise the heart rate, and engaged in 3-4 times a week for 30-60 minutes. This allows for fill-in sports activities as well as general improvement in health. Before starting one should buy proper shoes and loose fitting clothing that help to avoid injury while still maintaining a reasonable level of activity. Try walking on different types of terrain such as a park or mountain to change intensity. 

Another option for walking is to use it as a warm up before engage in a more rigorous sporting activities. For example, before you play basketball, tennis, fencing, self-defense or anything else that will require high exertion you may want to walk for a half hour first to warm up the body, stretch the legs, and reduce chances of injury. 

According to the U.S. Surgeon General nearly half the population doesn’t engage in any fitness routine or regular physical activity so you should feel proud of your accomplishments (3).  This means that a great portion of society is a risk for various types of diseases and ailments that may be avoided. Proper eating and consistent fitness routines are important for overall mental and physical health. 

Your employer may also enjoy your activities that can improve their bottom line. Regular fitness improved productivity $2,500 a year while each $1 spent reduced medical costs by US $3.27 and absenteeism by US $2.73 (4). Walking is a win-win for you, your employer, and your goals. Use walking as an augmentation to other life and sporting activities.

The Multiple Health Benefits of Tennis

Tennis affords an opportunity to augment your fitness routine while bouncing your fitness level upwards. Changing the activities you participate in a few times a week can help in not only improving your health but also your skill level in sports.  Tennis is a well rounded sport that does much of the same thing as sprinting and coordination exercises but is much more fun.

I’m an advocate of using multiple sports and activities to improve health. Engaging exclusively in a single sport will use the same muscles repetitively can cause an injury. When a change in the activity occurs there is also a change in the type of muscles used, the skills learned, and ultimately the fitness level. Change produces healthy stress on the body and requires an adjustment in fitness to master that stress.

Tennis is a greater overall fitness sport that provides multiple benefits to health. According to Doctor Ralph Paffenbarger those who engage in tennis at least 3 times a week reduce their risk of death from nearly any cause by half (based on 10,000 people over 20 years)(1).  Tennis not only improves your health but also generates connections between nerves in the brain and therefore also promotes mental health (2).

If you’re seeking to lose weight tennis is a great sport for doing this with as much as 272 calories being burned in a half hour (3).  This puts tennis on the same level as swimming, sprinting, jogging, mountain climbing, biking, and other heavily involved cardiovascular activities. The greatest aspect of tennis is that it also encourages interest in fitness through healthy social engagement.

Tennis Maps is one way to help you find the type of tennis court you are looking for. They break their map into public/private access, backboard, lighting, center and indoor/outdoor.  This will help you find the right tennis court near your neighborhood for easy access and playing. Each of the locations can be clicked for a satellite map and additional information. 

Tennis Maps for San Diego