4 Basics of a Stronger Body Your body is a wondrous thing. It can be your greatest ally when you take care of it or your worst nightmare when you let things go. Maintaining a strong body is something that helps you enjoy your life. Take a look at the following 4 basics of creating a stronger body that will help you enjoy health and freedom for the years ahead.
Flexibility The first basic of a stronger body is to stretch often. When you stretch consistently, you retain flexibility, and even increase it. Flexibility will help you handle the strain of everyday work without pulling a muscle or twisting something. You’d be surprised how much lighter and more limber you feel post-stretching. Try to stretch out your body once or twice every day to maintain that much needed flexibility. It won’t save you from every injury, but it’ll help you avoid a lot of them.
Strength The second basic is pretty straight forward; strengthen all of your muscles. Your muscles support your skeleton, as well as cushion the impact of daily activities. When you have properly maintained muscles throughout your body, it functions better and is less prone to injury. Look at the high impact athletes to see just how important muscle can be. You build this muscle by participating in a full range of exercises. A full range constitutes working out all of the muscles in the body over the span of a week. For example, you may decide to run twice a week to work out the lower body. You may also decide to play racquetball once a week to focus on the core and upper body.
Then you may want to swim laps at the local pool to work on both at once, etc. You can also do focused workouts at the gym that can accomplish the same thing. It doesn’t matter so much where you do the muscle strengthening. It mostly matters that you balance it out to avoid injuries that could require electro surgery.
Know your body The third basic of building a stronger body is to know when to listen. No Pain, No Gain is the “manly” way to workout. Push yourself until you can’t push anymore and then go one more. If you can’t live to that standard then you’re worthless. Or at least that’s what the general consensus of working out seems to be with those that are “hard core.” The truth is that that style of working out often gets you injured. Your body can only take so much before it has to rest. It’ll tell you it’s done with pain. You need to learn to recognize when an activity is hurting your body, and when it’s helping it to grow. If you feel any problems in a joint and not your muscles, for instance, then you should take a break before you wind up needing electro surgery to fix an injury your body warned you could come. So listen to your body. Then respond according to what it is saying, even if you didn’t hit your workout goal.
Eat Healthy The last basic is to eat healthy. You can work your muscles down to jelly, and if you don’t provide them the proper nutrients to build them back up again, you’ll be left with nothing but jelly in the future. When you work out consistently, be sure to replace the fats, calories, energy, and other nutrients that you need to build up your muscles so they can be ready for a harder task the next time. These are the four basics of building a stronger body. When your body is well fortified, you’ll avoid injury more and seek electro surgery less—improving your general way of life. Photo Credit: Hey Mr Glen, United States Marine Corps, Pink Sherbet Photography