Imagination – The Key Ingredient to Fitness Exercise

Does life, work, chores keep you too busy for fitness exercise? Are you thinking that if you only had that $1500 Bowflex machine, it would help you “fit exercise into your schedule,” eliminating the time-wasting, thirty-minute drive to the workout gym, for example? Does lack of clear know-how about what it takes to exercise your biceps, triceps, and abdomen cause you to think that if you just forked out 67 bucks for a set of DVDs packed with encouragement, you’d be well on your way to fitness? Let me plant a seed here. What counts is movement, not machinery or manuals. When I started my personal fitness exercise regimen to reduce my belly fat, I opted for “Free.” Walking was free. Jogging in place was free. Sit-ups were free, too. They are still free, I think. “And you can get yours now, for just $19.99 in three E-Z payments” …just kidding. This idea is free. But it’s costing you time, if you don’t start your fitness routine by today’s bedtime. Movement is the simplest idea yet. I know it is basic. You can get movement in thousands of different ways more than exercise machine makers and fitness manual writers would care to admit. Also, time requirements. For example, 30-minute workout routines are not as firmly rooted, say, as a lodgepole pine in the forest – unmovable. Instead, consider as potted plants a fitness exercise regimen that gives you deep breathing and a raised heartbeat in ten minute chunks. You can arrange potted plants around furniture just like exercise around your daily schedule. With imagination. Fitness exercise doesn’t need to be extravagantly complicated. A well-balanced fitness program includes three types of fitness exercise. 1. Cardiovascular or aerobic movement for improving the heart and lungs, burning calories, and helping to control cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and stress. 2. Strength-building movement for maintaining good muscular firmness and shape. 3. Flexibility movement for greater mobility along with relief from stiffness and stress. The point here is to use your imagination to arrange three 10-minute portions – remember the potted plants. You do not have to have a huge planter – a huge chunk of time in your day – to do fitness exercise. Let’s cover aerobic exercise. Aerobics are about raising your heart rate and oxygen consumption. Aerobic exercising is doing an activity rhythmically and continuously. Any activity. The un-imaginative, schedule-carving-out, forms of aerobics we normally think of are walking or running (includes an exercise machine), and maybe swimming (includes driving to the local pool) or bicycling (includes getting a nice bike). You have a mind. Use it. Imagination should be a verb. Imaginatively – put more oomph in your day-to-day activities. Vigorously vacuum your house. Add extra strokes when sweeping your kitchen. Imaginatively, instead of merely walking from your car to the store front, park at the far end of the lot and gently jog the distance. Imaginatively, instead of buying into a workout club, work up your heart rate in ten-minute portions during the day. Do jumping jacks. Skip rope ($3 piece of equipment). Climb stairs, several times. Run in place. Do step-aerobics. Walk your dog. Imaginatively, walk from one end of Walmart to the other before getting what you need. Watch a video on the internet for 10-minutes. You get the idea. Movement in bursts and bites. And Free. The major point to take away here is to “Just Get Going.” Pun intended. Do not delay your fitness exercise for lack of having an athletic club membership or an exercise machine at home. Use your imagination to raise your heartbeat, get yourself breathing deeper and working up a small sweat. Let’s – imaginatively – rework a common saying. From now on it’s, “A sweat a day keeps the doctor away.” Imagination is the most important ingredient to any beginning exerciser. Later on, you can become a semi-professionalized exercise fitness addict. For now, go use your imagination.