Reasonable fitness: how to exercise while staying healthy

The fitness industry is constantly growing and begins to offer us something that is incompatible with the concept of a healthy lifestyle. How to do fitness “wisely” and not become a “victim” of sports, read the article.

I recommend reading this material to anyone involved in sports “for themselves”, with a trainer or on their own. To everyone who goes to the gym, or to group classes, or simply trains at home or on the street with the help of ready-made programs and videos or without them. Anyone who wants to lose weight and improve the figure, or vice versa to get rid of excessive thinness. In general, this article is for those who do not aspire to the stage to demonstrate their achievements, but study the issue of nutrition and training to maintain good shape and health.

The only goal I am pursuing in this article is to outline the boundaries of what can help you and what can harm you. And I sincerely hope that it will be useful to someone.

What is fitness?

Fitness, as a concept, includes a huge number of components. I would define fitness as a wide industry of practical and theoretical knowledge, which are aimed at improving health indicators, physical and external characteristics.

Too wide? Good. Fitness includes most of the areas and forms of physical activity that you can find in modern gyms: gym classes, aerobics, dancing, Pilates, yoga, functional training, and even training based on boxing or other martial arts. Those. Fitness is not the name of a particular type of exercise. This is a huge combination of all these areas of physical activity, which provide a wide range of opportunities to improve yourself, your health and appearance. I think that’s why, in Europe, gyms are often called fitness.

Does this seem obvious? Why am I writing this? Just because today I am witnessing a constant substitution of concepts that has arisen against the backdrop of the mass popularity of such areas of professional sports as fitness bikinis. The popularization of this category has led to the fact that often the training format of this “group” of athletes is presented as the only correct and healthy one. This is what we are “presented” with the name “fitness”. Although in fact, the “drying of the body” that they use as a diet, and their training regimen for an ordinary person, is not only not useful, but, in the end, causes a lot of health problems.

There is one very important thing that needs to be understood: there is the concept of professional sport, and there is the concept of physical education. Sport is designed to “squeeze” out of a person maximum. The main goal is to surpass the other. This is a wear and tear job. Physical education is aimed at improving health indicators, and, as a result, external data. And in the context of the topic of this material, fitness should be understood precisely as physical education, and not sport.

Below I will describe the main points that you should pay attention to if you do not want health to be at the cost of a beautiful body.

Fitness and contraindications to it
Everyone who begins to engage in one or another direction of fitness should understand that everything has its contraindications. Most workouts and most exercises are aimed at absolutely healthy people. And even with the ideal execution technique, certain movements can “overload” some area of ​​the body.

Now let’s be honest: are there really so many “perfectly” healthy people among us? Almost every second has back problems alone. Someone has scoliosis, someone just has pain and stiffness from low mobility, and someone has a herniated disc in general. And you need to take this into account and choose training and the degree of load in such a way as to improve this situation, and not harm even more. And if you think something in the style of “ah, nothing will happen”, then you make one of the main mistakes starting to train !!! Only I have enough acquaintances who also considered and acted on the principle of “squeezing the most out of themselves”. Do you know what the outcome? They are not yet 30, but the most “dedicated” have knee problems, like elderly people, hernias, vertebral displacements, etc. And believe me, it’s not at all fun when at this age you cannot afford to run and jump, or have to perform special exercises daily to get rid of excruciating back pain.

These consequences do not occur immediately. It’s just that every time you train in the wrong style for you, you gradually wear out your body and sooner or later it will fail. When? No one knows. But are you sure that you need these consequences?

And most importantly: YOU must take care of your health! Because no one else will do it.