Do You Workout For Your Health Or As A Sport? Time To Analyze Your “Why”
When you run, ride a bicycle, lift weights or do any combination of these activities, you generally have a goal in mind. Maybe it’s to lose weight. Or gain weight and bulk up for a team sport, like football. Whatever the reason you choose to enter the gym, you must look at the means you use to achieve the end you want. In other words, analyze your goal.
What Do You Mean By Analyze Your “Why?”
Simply this: The reason you do something should coincide with what you are doing to achieve the end result. So, if you are trying out for a team sport like cross country track, it would make sense to practice activities like sprints, pace running or even tackling a nearby trail. However, you may or may not see the benefit in spending time in the local gym learning .
The same thing is true when you consider why you spend time at doing any exercise. Are you training for some specific event, like a marathon? Or is your goal more toward long term health and overall fitness so you can pick up your grandkids or squat to reach something you dropped on the floor.
Re-Think “Fitness” And “Sport”
Many times when we think of fitness and sport, we may consider the terms interchangeable. Do you play pick-up games of flag football or 3 on 3 basketball to “stay fit”? Or maybe you find the challenge in learning a new physical skill, like double-under rope jumping. Each of these examples will help you achieve a certain level of fitness, but a pick-up game of flag football is a far cry from the organized team sport seen on any high school, college or regulation NFL field. As such, how you approach fitness should also be different.
The folks at MissionFiT and Courage Fitness Durham, in Durham, NC agree on this point:
“There is value in learning new skills and gaining confidence in our body and its ability to adapt, change and overcome. Not all exercises that are useful for competition are worth doing to reach health goals.”
More About The Value Of Fitness and Sport
- Sport vs. Health – 10 Minute Video featuring Tom Purvis, Resistance Training Specialist Program
- Fitness training vs. Sports Training – Dr. Mark Henry, Health Fitness Revolution
