When somebody says I am a fitness freak, what mainly people think are that he must be having a muscular physique with proper washboard abs, but Is fitness mainly concerned with our Aesthetics. Most of us want a chiseled physique or body like a Greek god and are spending hours after hours in the gym and watching our nutrition to achieve that and I totally respect the dedication of those people but we need to ask ourself the question Are we moving our body in the manner it’s supposed to ? Vanity is the first priority for most the people working out(mostly concerned with muscles) but is it all worth just going for vanity ,what about our heart ,joins ,fascia, balance ,coordination etc. Kris gethin always says exercise is therapeutic for him and his health is the second priority and vanity comes last, so we all fitness freaks need to ask ourself this question about what are about priorities in terms of fitness.if it’s just vanity or using the slang just being a BEAST then we are focusing on a very short term goal and losing out on the bigger picture of fitness .A fit body should be the one with aesthetics but also the body should have good enough mobility and stability so that you can do any movement or exercise without any unnecessary pain in the muscles not being involved for e.g. squats is a very great exercise but what’s the point of adding on weights to the bar just to satisfy our ego if your glutes are not firing, your ankle is lacking mobility and you are feeling the pain in your lower back after performing the exercise.What’s the point be having a great physique if you can’t run for 10 km and can’t perform our daily activities like picking up a pen while sitting on a chair , all the muscle weight will be going to add more stress on the heart and body only .
We need to start moving our body in 3D as our bodies are supposed to move in 3D but most the exercises we are doing are in the sagittal plane like squats, deadlifts. Hammer curl, front raises etc so we need to check if our workouts are balanced enough so that we are almost equal number of exercises in all frontal,sagittal and transverse plane.
Not just the main workout we also need to focus on the preparation for the workout which involves preparing our joints by doing movements with some mass , muscles by moving in different directions , fascia by adding speed to the movements , the nervous system and heart by sequencing and range of motion etc.
In addition to Spending hours for the workouts we also need to add more recovery options for the body by stretching, going for a massage or even doing self myofascial release as its not the breaking down of muscle which helps to grow but its about how you recover your body after the workout that counts.
Cardio needs a lot of attention as most the people fear that by doing cardio they will loose muscles but if cardio is done in a right manner it helps to grow more muscle and the stronger your heart more you are able to recover inbetween and after the workout, specially when you are doing workout for your lower body.
If fitness is taken like this then we can say that we are fit , we are a beast but this beast can run , it can do a split , it can do a handstand and can do the daily activities of life without facing any issue.
This article is given by Trainer Mukul Nagpal from New delhi.