Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
MAR 2014
iNSiDE
calendar • earth talk • Read & Play dad’s eye view • money matters • movie time
Conditioned for Health
SPRING & SUMMER 2014
by Jordan Kent
H
aving spent my whole life as an athlete of various degrees, I’ve always pondered at how, when it comes to choosing an activity of hobby, exercise is truly unique in how it can impact our lives. Exercise has the ability to inspire, motivate, challenge, and improve our overall well being. It seems the more we put into working out and taking care of our bodies, the more we get back, but that’s not always the case. The one tragic flaw about exercise and working out is, if we don’t approach it with a degree of caution and reality, it can lead to a variety of injuries and other emotional impacts that contrastingly have an adverse effect on us. Having been a former three-sport collegiate athlete and professional fo otball player, exercis e has essentially been a cornerstone of my life and has helped shape who I am as a person. I’ve experienced firsthand how valuable it is in creating a healthy life, and feel it should be an important part of every family, right along with the life lessons and morals we establish in our households. Regardless of how much exercise will be a part of your life, there are valuable things to consider before jumping into any sport or activity that will go a long ways in establishing safe and healthy routines for years to come.
Start Slow It sounds counterintuitive, but the one of the safest things you can do for yourself when beginning any new routine or sport is to ease your way into it. Our bodies are incredibly adaptable machines that when given time and proper training, will amaze us with what they are capable of doing. However, this takes time and you must “introduce” your body to new activities. Likewise, every sport and routine requires a different demand of functionality from your muscles, joints, and endurance; Hence, start with a thought-out plan. Take, for example, one of the most popular forms of exercise: jogging (or running). Many people assume they must factor in their endurance level when starting out, and that the quickest way to increase endurance is to run longer and harder. However, you have to take account the amount of impact your entire body will take: the pounding on your knees, the impact on your feet every step, the
load on your back, the output of your quad and hamstring muscles, all factor into how your body will respond. The classic example of starting a new regimen is, we are so eager to get results and feel great, so we blast out of the gates, working too hard and too much; and while we may feel good for that initial workout, the feeling afterwards can be drastically different! The typical next day after first is one of the worst feelings, as your body literally goes into mini shock, having to heal itself up after doing such a different work load. Diversify It’s amazing how much we try to multi-task on any given day. One glance down at your smart phone will show you how much you are trying to process at one time. While multitasking our brains may not always make the best decisions (that’s for another
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article!) but it’s actually wonderful when it comes to exercise. If you’ve ever heard the expression “too much of a good thing may be bad for you”, this certainly applies with exercise. When focusing on one sport or exercise, your body will adapt and your skill will improve along with it. However, very few activities can target every important aspect of exercise that your body needs. I actually had a firsthand experience with this recently. Ever since my NFL career ended, I have been big into Crossfit®. For those of you not familiar with Crossfit®, it is a high intensity interval training program that focuses on a variety of Olympic barbell exercises and body weight movements involving substantial weights, designed to engage as many large muscle groups as possible. The typical workout lasts anywhere from 5-15 minutes, but that’s all you will want when you finish as the workouts are that grueling! They are designed to have you push yourself very hard for a short continued on page 3…