Lift Big, Sprint Short, Walk Daily
Recently I wrote about how to approach exercising for health. Regardless of age or previous level of physical activity, lifting, walking and sprinting have been shown to improve health and longevity.
Strive for Progression, Not Perfection
Have you ever sat down and just wondered why you even bother?
If so, it’s hardly surprising. Every day we are bombarded with reminders that we should be constantly striving to:
• Perform better at work, and earn more money.
• Be a better husband, wife, child, parent, and friend.
• Get more exercise, and lose weight.
• Eat more healthily. What constitutes “healthy” will also change almost daily.
Lift, Walk, Sprint
Nowhere in the following text will you find me recommending that you go to the gym and destroy yourself for two hours a day.
For those of you that know me, I think you may find that fact a little surprising (hi mum). This article is designed purely to make sure that you are alive, kicking, and spending your children’s inheritance for as long as possible. For that reason I think it’s worth, right at the start, differentiating between exercise for health and exercise for performance. Obviously you can spend years training for performance whilst improving health and vice versa, and that is the balance that many people find, but it is not always the case.
Are You Sitting Comfortably? (Part 2)
Related to the post below, a second study was floating around the interweb last week, which is worth looking at. It caused a stir in a number of health and fitness circles as a “hallelujah” moment, and came tagged with headlines such as:
“Exercise ‘can be as good as pills’”
and
“Exercise As Effective As Drugs For Treating Heart Disease, Diabetes”
Are You Sitting Comfortably?
Last week, two studies turned up in the news that I felt related well to one another.
The first study showed that just walking can reduce your risk of breast cancer. They took 73,615 women as part of the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study II and followed them to see how many got cancer, and whether it was related to any of their lifestyle factors.
Their work aimed to build on the studies which suggest that being physically active will decrease your risk of breast cancer by around 25%. At the start of the study, women were asked how much of their time they spent doing various physical activities, such as walking. I did find it interesting that while they were asked about “aerobics” and “dancing”, there was no mention of any sort of strength training. However, the study started in 1992, back when the fitness world was in full lycra mode… The questionnaire also asked about the amount of leisure time spent sitting per week (ie watching TV).
