Fitness
is a touchy subject for a lot of people these days. Everyone has an
opinion and a favorite type of fitness (from none at all to excessive
and everything in between). What is truly the best type of exercise? Is
it different for men and women? What about moms like me who don’t have
the time to log the suggested 60 minutes a day?
These are the questions I set out to answer. For me, fitness was a passion I had to develop and I wanted my kids to enjoy physical movement and stay in shape without ever having to go “work out”. (I never liked that term! If we associate it with work, who wants to do it?) With the help of my athletic husband and brother-in-laws, I set out to find the answers.
Before we can figure out the best type of fitness, we must figure out the goal of a fitness regime in the first place. I wonder, for all the gym bots who log endless miles on the treadmill: is the goal to be able to run endless miles on the treadmill? I understand that for many, marathons and other races provide motivation and this is the goal, but is the best type of exercise, especially for women?
I thought about my true goals in fitness: to have a healthy physique, to be able to join a pick up game of flag football if the opportunity arose, to be able to kayak with my husband, to be able to keep up with the kids, to have enough strength of movement to be able to rock climb, swim, scuba dive, or hike whenever I had the chance. More importantly, for me, was the ability to react quickly and competently if a life-threatening situation ever arose, especially when I was with my kids.
From conversations with other moms, this last goal seems to be an important one, in thought at least. I know of a mom who had to crawl out a second story window and onto her roof while holding her newborn to escape a flood. I know a mom who climbed a tree while holding a toddler to avoid an angry dog. I know a mom who jumped into a lake at a local park and swam to shore towing a 200 pound man who was having difficulty. Could I do these things, I wondered?
I read a story of a man who was sitting on the beach when the water line receded quickly and he saw a dark line on the horizon. Realizing it was a tsunami, he sprinted away from the beach. The only means of escape that the water would not reach was atop a rocky face about 40 feet up. He sprinted to the rocks and climbed up with just seconds to spare. He had the fitness to keep himself alive, but he watched with horror as many others did not. People died that day because they did not have the physical ability to save their own lives.
Would I be able to survive in that situation? More importantly, would I be able to survive and get my kids up also? While these situations are rare, other situations where proper fitness determine our ability to save our own lives are much more commonplace. How many studies have you read about the links between high fitness levels and decreased risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke? Pretty much all of the experts agree that fitness is important, which brings us back to the big question-how do we get there?
In all of the above situations, I don’t think the hour a day of mindless running on a treadmill like a caged hamster will have a tremendous effect on survival ability. I realized that what we truly need is functional fitness- a level of fitness that makes daily activities (and extreme ones) easier. God-willing, none of us will ever have to escape a tsunami or save a drowning person, but if we did… shouldn’t we be prepared?
These are the questions I set out to answer. For me, fitness was a passion I had to develop and I wanted my kids to enjoy physical movement and stay in shape without ever having to go “work out”. (I never liked that term! If we associate it with work, who wants to do it?) With the help of my athletic husband and brother-in-laws, I set out to find the answers.
Before we can figure out the best type of fitness, we must figure out the goal of a fitness regime in the first place. I wonder, for all the gym bots who log endless miles on the treadmill: is the goal to be able to run endless miles on the treadmill? I understand that for many, marathons and other races provide motivation and this is the goal, but is the best type of exercise, especially for women?
I thought about my true goals in fitness: to have a healthy physique, to be able to join a pick up game of flag football if the opportunity arose, to be able to kayak with my husband, to be able to keep up with the kids, to have enough strength of movement to be able to rock climb, swim, scuba dive, or hike whenever I had the chance. More importantly, for me, was the ability to react quickly and competently if a life-threatening situation ever arose, especially when I was with my kids.
From conversations with other moms, this last goal seems to be an important one, in thought at least. I know of a mom who had to crawl out a second story window and onto her roof while holding her newborn to escape a flood. I know a mom who climbed a tree while holding a toddler to avoid an angry dog. I know a mom who jumped into a lake at a local park and swam to shore towing a 200 pound man who was having difficulty. Could I do these things, I wondered?
I read a story of a man who was sitting on the beach when the water line receded quickly and he saw a dark line on the horizon. Realizing it was a tsunami, he sprinted away from the beach. The only means of escape that the water would not reach was atop a rocky face about 40 feet up. He sprinted to the rocks and climbed up with just seconds to spare. He had the fitness to keep himself alive, but he watched with horror as many others did not. People died that day because they did not have the physical ability to save their own lives.
Would I be able to survive in that situation? More importantly, would I be able to survive and get my kids up also? While these situations are rare, other situations where proper fitness determine our ability to save our own lives are much more commonplace. How many studies have you read about the links between high fitness levels and decreased risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke? Pretty much all of the experts agree that fitness is important, which brings us back to the big question-how do we get there?
In all of the above situations, I don’t think the hour a day of mindless running on a treadmill like a caged hamster will have a tremendous effect on survival ability. I realized that what we truly need is functional fitness- a level of fitness that makes daily activities (and extreme ones) easier. God-willing, none of us will ever have to escape a tsunami or save a drowning person, but if we did… shouldn’t we be prepared?
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