As fitness and wellness’s popularity hit an ever-increasing high, physical culture has taken over the minds of many people. The benefits of being strong and healthy are surely unquestionable, as everyone wants to live a life free of illness (or at least a strong immunity against it) and relative strength that makes everyday tasks easier. It’s almost like having superpowers, albeit scaled down to a realistic tone.
This has resulted in many people living a very physical lifestyle. Working out, exercises, physical activity- to an extent that almost rivals a professional athlete. Of course, minus the competition against others and a professional field to ply your fitness skills on. But even if you’re not a competitive athlete, the benefits of living like one cannot be understated. Here are a few reasons why you should consider training like one.
Holistic and Purposeful Strength
As mentioned before, training your body to be physically fit and strong helps you a lot. From everyday tasks like picking up things off the ground, moving furniture, to even walking and jogging somewhere, having the physical ability beyond that of someone living a sedentary lifestyle is just good. It allows you to play with your children, enjoy fun activities like sports, and physically-challenging hobbies like hiking and martial arts. Simply put, it just feels good to be strong.
Situation Preparedness
Of course, a benefit to being physically strong is the innate ability to respond to dangerous situations. Say an accident happens and someone gets pinned by something heavy, like a dresser or shelf. Having the strength needed to lift up the object is akin to being a flatbed freighter when moving large amounts of things. It’s beneficial as it protects you from danger while being able to provide help if necessary.
Health and Wellness
All the strength in the world is pointless when you get constantly sick, even with such simple illnesses like a common cold or a runny nose. Luckily, improving your fitness also increases your immunity to common illnesses. No longer will you be bothered by simple flu, as it takes more than that to bring your body down. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee full immunity, but in a time like this, having any sort of protection helps.
The How
Living like an athlete is not for everyone, however, as it’s time-consuming and literally takes up your life. But it’s a worthy effort to aspire to be at your physical best. Here’s how you can get started.
Meal Prep For Dietary Needs
To have a strong and healthy body, you need to feed yourself with all the necessary vitamins and nutrients to build it. These all-important vitamins and nutrients are commonly found in the food we consume, albeit in a different quantity. What you want is food infused with those nutrients minus the unnatural preservatives and extenders common in many foods today. To fulfill this, it’s better to prepare meals in advance, so you can control the ingredients used and ensure that you meet your dietary needs for the day.
Integrate Training Into Your Lifestyle
Again, fitness can take up someone’s life. That’s why there are professions entirely dedicated to helping people get fit. But this doesn’t mean that you have to quit your job to become strong. Instead, by integrating physical culture into your existing lifestyle, you’re not only keeping what you enjoy about your life but adding more to it. This does entail a lot of wiggling your schedule so you can have time to train, but once you’ve integrated it fully, you’re off to a great start.
You can start by looking at your current lifestyle and removing what isn’t helpful and changing it to what is helpful. Take, for example, Friday night drinking- you can change that into a strength training session. Or switching your favorite pizza to a healthier one. All it takes is a little adjustment.
Journey Your Progress
It’s easy to feel demotivated when you don’t quite see your progress. Especially if you’re focused on the end goal of being strong and healthy. That’s why you need to counteract this by being conscious of your own journey and progress, and one way you can do that is by keeping track of yourself. Keep a fitness diary where you log diet history and strength gains. This will help remind yourself that you have indeed become stronger than you were before.
Don’t Forget to Rest
With all the excitement of training and living a life that’s healthy and fit, you can fall into the trap of not resting. After all, it’s easy to believe that a day’s rest is slacking. But rest is just as crucial to your body as it allows you to heal and use the nutrients to build a better and stronger body.
