How Exercise Can Change Your Life
What is exercise? According to Dictionary.com, the true definition of exercise is: “bodily or mental exertion, especially for the sake of training or improvement of health.” The improvement of health is what really catches my eye. I think for the general population, most people don’t look at exercise as an improvement of health, rather than just a physical activity that we all dread to take on. So what is it that makes exercise so unappealing? Is it the thought of having to break from your recently addictive netflix series or is it the fact that you’ll have to get all sweaty and add a little extra effort into your daily schedule? On another point, what makes exercise worthwhile? To me, exercise is more than just the physical perspective, it’s emotional. Exercise is one of my biggest stress relievers; and when life gets just a little too crazy to handle, I know there is always a bar there when I need it.
Now, most people look at me and assume I’ve always been involved with fitness in some way. This statement may be true, but what most don’t know, is the reason behind it all. I was a competitive gymnast for fourteen years and let me tell you, exercise played a major role during that time. In gymnastics, conditioning and exercise is practically a fifth event. However, I wasn’t the athlete that looked towards it, like most. It wasn’t until a shoulder injury, causing me to leave the sport I so graciously loved, that exercise was the only thing I had left to look forward to. It was a completely new road for me, because for the last fourteen years of my life, I ate, slept, and breathed gymnastics, and in one blink of an eye, just like that, it wasn’t. So, like I said, exercise is my emotional outlet. When I no longer had gymnastics to lean on, I leaned on the gym. Even though I lost a love in my life, I found one in fitness. Exercise brought many benefits into my life to void what I lost after gymnastics. Exercise was more than just keeping me in shape, it brought joy into days where I needed it most, and it taught me patience, perseverance, and hope. Exercise soon began to shape my life, and shape the person I am today.
There is so much more to exercise than most people realize, far beyond just the improvements of our well-being. I recently stumbled upon a New York Times Article explaining the seven surprising benefits of exercise, those being: Exercise is great for the brain, you might get happier, it might make you age slower, It’ll make your skin look better, amazing things can happen in just a few minutes, it can help you recover from a major illness, and your fat cells will shrink. Exercise does more for a person than just the physical aspects. Take a read and find out what exercise can do for you.
-Coach Tara Heck
