Also in this issue:

Presidents Message

A word from the inspirer

Healthy Pursuits

UCLA study on friendship among women

Wellness Tips for your Business

Secrets to Keeping Your Best People

Extraordinary Lives

Save $ by Barter

Extraordinary Living

Clean Calgary

Extraordinary Inspiration

How to Make Your Business Greener

Extraordinary Insights

Wind Turbines

Our Inspiration

Books and Films that Inspire d-s

hwel, the desnoyers-schuler newsletter, is published with the mission of advancing leaders in extraordinary living.

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

For feedback or editorial comments, please email: editor@desnoyers-schuler.com or call: 403 398-3999.

Holistic Exercise is About LIFE!

– By Tim Borys

There is no doubt that exercise is beneficial to health, vitality and performance. However, most people spend years doing incorrect activities and fail to get the results they desire.

The common approach is to spend time in the gym working specific muscles or doing large amounts of “cardio” on machines. The fact is, a significant percentage of this work is unnecessary and often counterproductive.

This machine-based style of exercise is common in almost every “health” club and fitness centre in the world, yet is completely counterproductive to the needs of your body and the demands of daily life.

Movement in life happens in 3 dimensions where the body must support and stabilize itself from a variety of outside forces to prevent injury. For example, a mother who bends down to pick up her child from the floor must squat or bend to a deep level and lift an often heavy child to chest height or even above her head. This activity is a complicated full body action that involves coordination, movement, stability, and strength throughout almost every muscle in the body.

So, if this is an example of the types of activities that are performed each day in life (there are thousands of other examples), why do so many people strap themselves to machines in a seated or lying position to work their muscles through a pre-determined and limited range of motion?

The answer is lack of knowledge and marketing (marketing is a completely different article though)! This machine-based style of exercise is common in almost every “health” club and fitness centre in the world, yet is completely counterproductive to the needs of your body and the demands of daily life.

While entire libraries can be filled with the styles and techniques of proper training - for now, just know that for optimal FUNction AND aesthetics, exercises should be designed to train you for “The Sport of Life.” This involves mastering internally supported whole body movements. Resistance is only applied once the movement can be correctly performed without resistance.

To put it simply, do exercise where YOU must control and coordinate your movements without the help of external objects such as machines or benches. Start with low intensity, less complex movements and then build the difficulty level as your proficiency improves.

It is important to consult a qualified training professional to identify potential errors in your movement that may be limiting performance and increasing the possibility of injury. A good trainer will assess movement along with your nutrition and lifestyle habits and then design a complete lifestyle plan to help you reach your goals.

One of the major factors often overlooked is the interplay between stress levels and exercise. Stress is a normal part of life. It is your body’s response to internal or external environmental changes and can produce physical, mental, and emotional responses. Whether “good” or “bad,” stress is cumulative. If too much is present, or maintained over a prolonged period, problems will begin to occur in the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of your life.

Intense exercise is a form of physical stress on the body, so performing intense exercise on a body that is already overloaded with other types of stress (mental, emotional, other internal physical factors), can actually be counterproductive and create a greater detrimental load on the system.

Does this mean that you should stop exercising when stressed!? Definitely not! It just means that you need to look at different types of exercise that will create positive energy in the body rather than drain energy away from it. Yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and other energizing movements are excellent ways to reinforce correct movement and breathing while increasing your energy or Chi.

Remember that exercise should be about movement and the intensity can be varied dramatically depending on your needs on any particular day! Performing “energizing” activities will help decrease stress and allow you to increase the intensity of future workouts. If you get in the routine of doing some type of physical activity each day, you will find that the blend of intensity to energizing and recovery becomes a natural part of your physical, psychological, and emotional health.

If you want to begin an exercise program, but aren’t sure where to start, or if you aren’t satisfied with your lack of results, contact FRESH! for a trainer skilled in movement analysis and get started today!

NOTE: This article is an excerpt from the E-Book called “6 Keys to Lifelong Health. The E-book will be distributed for FREE through the FRESH! E-Newsletter over the next several months. The newsletter contains monthly articles, fitness tips, and information about local health and wellness seminars. Visit www.freshfitness.ca to sign up for this excellent newsletter.