There are three kinds of exercise: athletic exercise, fitness exercise and health preservation (therapeutic) exercise. It is important to understand their differences so you can effectively use Systemic Exercise to regain your health.
1. Athletic Exercise
The “no pain, no gain” approach is appropriate in athletic exercise. Coaches drive athletes to push beyond their comfortable capacity to improve performance. When athletes experience fatigue or pain during training or competition, even though their body is telling them to stop, their mind has to say “continue anyway.” They must push beyond the point of fatigue and pain if they are to win competitions or break records. In athletic exercise this approach makes sense.
2. Fitness Exercise
We use fitness exercise to get back into good physical condition. It should be much gentler and safer than athletic exercise. However, when people decide to get back into shape, they tend to use athletic activities to do it. What are the results?
The health insurance companies that pay for treatment of injuries tell us that 90 percent of people who start jogging and 35 percent of people who start walking programs are injured during the first six weeks. Sixty percent of people who begin other types of exercise classes are injured within the first six weeks. This includes low-impact and no-impact classes. Sports such as tennis and golf, also have very high injury rates, and weight training also scores very poorly.
The most popular fitness programs are causing injuries and fatigue because they utilize athletic principles and activities instead of fitness principles. But we can’t participate in athletic activities without fatigue or injury unless we are already in good athletic condition. To be comfortable, safe and effective fitness exercise should be regulated by a completely different set of principles than athletic exercise.
If our health is poor, athletic or fitness exercise will reduce our vitality, cause imbalances in our blood quality and impair blood circulation and neurological activity. In other words, they will weaken our Three Systemic Functions instead of improving them. All this will retard our recovery from, or prevention of, chronic health problems.
The author knows from his experience with athletes and fitness buffs that many of them develop health problems caused by the very exercise they have taken up to improve their health.
3. Health Preservation Exercise
Health preservation (therapeutic) exercise requires a different set of principles than athletic or fitness exercise. It should always be appropriate for our condition the moment we are doing it, regardless of our energy level or state of health. As our symptoms and energy vary, our exercise should vary. We should always be able to exercise at a comfortable level no matter how sick we are. There is no room for the “no pain, no gain” approach in health preservation exercise.
When we have health problems of any kind, one of the most common symptoms is lowered vitality. In fact, reduction of our natural vitality is at the core of any chronic illness. Therefore, it is important to keep our energy level up as much as possible, as the body needs large amounts of energy for regeneration and recovery.
In the short term, Systemic Exercise raises our vitality and keeps it up for several hours after each exercise session. In the long term (after a few months) Systemic Exercise causes the body to gradually regain its normal vitality level, correct its blood chemistry and circulation and improve neurological function. In the process, many kinds of health problems can be reduced or eliminated.
By the way, if we want to get back into a fitness or athletic exercise program, Systemic (therapeutic) Exercise is a perfect place to start. In a few months, it lays down an excellent foundation on which to build a effective fitness program. We can then seamlessly progress to athletic exercise if we choose to. We avoid fatigue, injuries and setbacks along the way by laying this solid foundation first
Systemic Principles can be applied to any level of exercise;
for the very sick, for fitness, or for athletics.
The Systemic Health Recovery Course: Part One, Systemic Exercise leads you step-by-step in leaning how to do therapeutic, health preservation exercise. You can do it no matter what level of health you are starting from, no matter what kind of chronic health problems you have.