Why Is The Gym Rat Going Outside?

Exercise benefits us in many ways that are obvious. We increase overall fitness and athleticism. We strengthen bones, muscles, and all connective tissue. Our cardiovascular health improves. What isn’t so obvious is that we also strengthen our brain neuron connections, which in turn help us to facilitate learning, and we can improve our memory, just by exercise. So exercise to improve aging is a good thing. Getting off the sofa to get another beer and considering it exercise is not.

Not all exercise is the same. Going to the gym and working on squats is very different than gardening, yet each utilizes squats to accomplish the task. The gym produces repetitive motion along particular lines of stress; gardening is moving with motion. Along with squatting, it is also bending, lifting, stabilizing, and changing positions. Squats are used in real life instead of isolation.

There’s nothing wrong with isolation, but you probably don’t do squats without thinking about why you are doing them. That’s the point, isn’t it? To improve your quads, stabilize your hips and knees, utilize your core muscles. You think about the exercise.

Conversely, you don’t think about your quads when you garden. You think about moving plants, digging holes, weeding, pruning, watering. You move your body and you reach up, twist, and bend down, utilizing your quads, and other muscles. Our body functions better by loading and repositioning. That’s us, moving.

We mostly sit, we ponder, we move the same way day after day. We develop dysfunctional movement patterns from repetition. Muscles and bones develop along the lines of stress of how we use them. The same thing happens at the gym, and that’s not a bad thing. Quadricep work follows similar patterns, and there are only so many ways to do bicep curls.

Sometimes we need to garden instead. It’s what we do in real life that keeps us functional to do everything else that life offers. We exercise without realizing it when we chase a kid or a dog down the beach, garden, swim (hot tubs don’t count), or climb a ladder to paint the house.

Broaden how you think about exercise. You don’t have to go to a gym, or join a group Zumba class, although it might be fun, and peer pressure is enough to get you to go. Think in terms of someone who moves in all directions and different ranges of motion, incorporating the whole body at all different speeds, not someone who exercises. It’s a difference that dictates how your body responds that allows you to age functionally, and keeps your mind sharp. Which you need to determine if that’s a weed or a valuable plant. And is the beer cold yet?

And it’s Aging Intelligently.