When you stop and think about your body you realize God created a masterpiece. If even one atom or molecule was off, you wouldn’t even be here right now.
Everything had to line up perfectly. Coming into this world as a healthy human being isn’t just a given. God designed, stitched, and wove you together just right. Many functions in your body operate naturally, without you even knowing it.
Do you realize you are made up of:
- 600+- muscles.
- 250+- bones.
- 17,000 beats per day from your respiratory system.
- 100 million receptors that give you sight.
- 13 billion nerve cells to think, create, and file away knowledge memories and perceptions.
- 24,000 fibers in your ear to hear.
- 7 miles of nerve fiber to make you feel.
- 30 feet of intestinal tract to digest food and eliminate toxins.
- 35 million heart beats per year.
- 60,000 miles of veins and arteries.
- 70 trillion cells.
You are not an accident. Make no mistake, you were meant to be here. How many times do you stop and think about His greatest creation, you?
When you do, you have a whole new appreciation for the gift of life God gave you. And this is what I believe helps your motivation to take care of yourself last, always.
There is truth in the saying that if you don’t use it you’ll lose it.
After the age of 30 you will lose small percentages of muscle mass no matter what you do. Part of biological development is that you’re body will weaken over time.
Now imagine if you don’t do something about it! That process will happen even faster and a lot more issues will come with it.
You can fight hard to halt a lot of degeneration. In fact, you can keep yourself feeling prime for a long time. Just because you get older does not mean your quality of life should diminish. You do not have to accept just ok.
After all, what’s the ultimate goal with physical fitness? To move longer and better so you can live longer and better.
You don’t want to add years to your life but have no quality. Living until your 90 but dependent on someone else’s care is not living longer and better. There are people who have great cognitive functioning and live independently at 90 years old. We’ll talk about them in a bit.
What’s one of the main problems in this world today? We don’t move enough. Literally, some people don’t really move at all.
The industrial revolution in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s changed things in so many ways. So many benefits came with our innovative technologies. But what else happened? People stopped farming as much. Physical labor in manufacturing and plants lessened. We stopped working the fields and railroads. We took on more desk jobs. We became sedentary.
We stopped being physical. That’s why gyms were created. Oh, and don’t get me started on the decrease in physical education in schools. Look up what physical education was like in the 50’s and 60’s. The school gym looked like functional fitness gyms. Nowadays, most kids don’t even get gym class by high school. My middle schoolers get it maybe twice a week.
Our culture has lost the value for physicality. Think about this, if you are healthy and athletically fit, you are rare.
- 75% of Americans are overweight.
- Now, almost 50% are obese.
Wow. We don’t know what true health is anymore.
I have to share this because when you see the problem for what it is, you gain an outside vantage point of the bigger picture and then can understand the WHY behind the solution.
Why do we have to move? Bottom line, we were designed that way. Our bodies need it. So whether or not we want to, to function at our best, we have to.
Benefits of physical exercise beyond just physical:
- You’re more positive.
- Clear minded.
You can read my cliff notes about blue zones here 
One of my biggest takeaways from researching this population group is that moderate physical movement is a major similarity among each region (5 of them have been marked).
These triple digit humans don’t stop moving. They walk a lot, continue to do work around the house, cultivate gardens and pick crops, tend to their sheep, and some still do physical labor to make a living.
Sustainable fitness is the key trait for them.
Crazy, insane, high intensity exercises weren’t regular habits of these individuals. They just moved and moved well and moved regularly.
Walking is a very common physical activity among all these regions.
I point this out because we tend to want to kill ourselves when we train. We look for the toughest workout, the next best trend or gadget, and the next state of the art equipment. At least that was my mentality throughout my years as an athlete. The fitness industry’s marketing tactics don’t help much either.
Physical movement doesn’t have to be that over board. Especially when most of us are not paid athletes or making a career out of it right now. We’re parent athletes just wanting to stay in great shape and most importantly, move like this for as long as possible.
There is nothing wrong with taking on challenges. That’s how we rebuild and grow. But let’s reduce risk for injury when training. Protect your body. There’s always a way to stay in the best shape of our lives while removing joint jarring, muscle tearing, stress wearing routines and protocols. I’ve learned time and time again that less is more and simple is better!
Move moderately. You don’t have to over do it.
You know you have to keep your body moving and now I’m going to say that resistance training needs to be a part of your life. It will keep your muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments strong, improve your cardiovascular capacity, and redefine your body composition (lower body fat).
Simple resistance training entails moving your body against resistance in all planes of motion. Generally, you can do this in five ways. Push. Pull. Squat. Lunge. Rotate.
How do you apply resistance? You can use weights, bands, medicine balls, and other gadgets, and don’t forget how much you can do with just your bodyweight.
You can change variations and intensity by going slow, fast, holding in an isometric, exploding with plyo’s, doing standard tempos, and changing range of motion to partial reps.
There are a lot of ways to engage in resistance training. Basically you are breaking down your muscles, by applying a stimulus that challenges your effort, and then during the recovery phase rebuilding and getting stronger. I put together a video below to show you more.
AMPLIFY YOUR WORKOUTS WITH THESE SIMPLE RESISTANCE TRAINING CONCEPTS
Plus in our HD Shred, 2.0, and 3.0 workout programs we give you full follow along videos with just one set of weights, a band, and your bodyweight.
There are other athletic types of movement that we were designed to engage in. Like crawling, running, skipping, climbing, and throwing. Mixing in these types of systemic strength movements accelerate your results.
Also, think about moving forward, backwards, sideways, up and down. Resistance Training is like an art. There’s a flow to it. When done right, you feel the natural connection and circulation happening during your routines.
Now, in my master the basic series I’m talking a lot about resistance training.
What about cardio?
Let’s stop here. We’ll talk about cardio in part 2.