What is it like being you? What do you go through on daily basis that nobody else knows about? Do you find yourself going through the motions of your life and sometimes, not very often but sometimes, you wonder what the hell are you doing, in this job or with that person? How much of what you do is based on others liking you? Do you ever catch yourself wondering who you are? Where you came from? Do you watch movies about heroism or true love and wonder, not when but if you will ever get these things for yourself?
Do you ever wonder why you’re here? Or how you wish you could discover your strengths, transform your weaknesses and free yourself from the feelings keeping you down?
Exercising purely as a health goal is just not enough. The benefits of exercise are much more efficiently applied (and more enjoyment and productivity is derived) when there is a clear and defined vision of what you want from your life.
The goal of this EBook is to help you create for yourself your personal vision of what life can be for you. Once this vision is held firmly in your heart and mind, everything you do becomes another step closer to achieving it. And I do mean everything! In other words, you will create a meaningful exercise routine based upon you and your life. Meaningless exercise only produces frustration and boredom.
Before we begin creating your vision there are some things we first must cover to set the stage.
Our definition of exercise is as a means to strengthen and improve your connection to your body so you can use it better for the needs and goals of your life. The way we improve this connection is the various fitness applications of weight lifting, endurance training, Yoga, Pilates, etc.
Exercise is a process of evolution. There is no “getting there”. Our goal is to help you to recognize, address and flow with your body’s ever changing needs.
Allowing your body to be as it is without trying to conform to some attachment to the way it was in the past provides your body greater freedom to change and is so much healthier for your mind. The focus here is to improve your body without expectation or attachment to a result. If you focus all your attention to what you are doing as you are doing it then results happen much faster. The more effort you give to each moment you are exercising increasing your exercise output and efficiency. The greater this efficiency, the greater your results will be.
Freedom from results brings results. Place all your energy and focus on maintaining a maximum effort per workout. By giving your full attention to the practice of moving and using your body gives you the power to achieve the goals of your life with more awareness and connection to what is actually happening rather than what you think should be happening.
Exercising in the “correct” way for reasons outside of yourself creates stress in your body and mind. I have watched too many clients decrease their enjoyment of exercise because they believe they should be able to exert at a higher level than they are currently capable of performing. Their belief is “Exercise should be easy. It’s so simple!”. When you expect to perform at a level higher than you can exert the most common reaction is to blame yourself for being weak. People have a tendency to make themselves wrong, criticize and judge themselves or become so impatient ultimately, they spoil their experience.
What I suggest is that you approach exercise as a process of discovery. Allow yourself to be wherever you are in your exercise evolution without judgment or assessment of your performance. In short, practice exercising. By practice, I mean there is no right or wrong. You are trying and exploring different ways of using and moving your body and seeing what happens. Productive exercise is hard enough without adding additional pressures.
When it comes down to it, the big picture is… it’s just exercise. The more you make exercise a time where it’s okay to do it “wrong” aka inefficiently, the more you cause additional stress and tension to wear your body (and self-esteem) down. However, the more you focus your attention on exercising from your heart because it fulfills the needs of your life, the more you will enjoy it.
Using the average life expectancy of 100 years (I’m an optimist!), I have calculated the number of gym visits based upon age and usage of the gym from a statistics company called Promote it. (http://www.promote-it.com/Report_Form.html) I have averaged the number of visits depending upon the month and calculated the average times a person uses the gym over the course of one year to be approximately 100 visits.
Therefore:
This means if you are between the ages of 35-45 you can expect to be in the gym (or workout) between 5500 - 6500 more times! That’s a lot of workouts! If you think of it in terms of stocks, you know over this course of time each workout will be added to your total workouts, which will ultimately produce improved quality of life, health and longevity!
What this tells us is no 1 session will make or break you. The changes you are creating take time for your body to develop. Remember it’s all about adaptation. Each workout is cumulative and part of the larger process of your development.
My point is this: If you give yourself enough time and expend sufficient effort while focusing on the process of exercising instead of obsessing about the desired outcome, you will achieve the results you desire.