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Active in life and travel
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Act responsible for yourself, community and the natural areas around you.
Staying fit while Traveling
Activity vs Exercise
We are not active as part of a daily necessity, but it is a necessity for living a sustainable healthy life. Overfeeding and under working our bodies lead to lowered bone density, lowered muscle density, and increased body fat, not just under our skin, but in our systems. The enjoyment of a long-term healthy life requires cardiovascular fitness and stable functional movements, in other words physical activity. It is easier to make this happen if it becomes part of a routine. I can understand that this can feel difficult, a chore at first but can also become a great satisfaction over time.
The concept of physical EXERCISE has been created as it replaces physical activity, what the body was evolved to do. It is not difficult to start being more physically active. Physical activity opportunities are all around. You just need the tools and know-how to use them. With being regularly physically active you should be able to prevent injury to the body caused by a sudden stress of which the body is not used to. A basic movement used in daily living, something like standing up or reaching above our heads, may become an unintentionally imbalanced or highly exerted movement leading to an injury. Simply put, if a sudden stress is too big injury can occur, anything from muscle tear to heart attack.
At the same time if the stress is too little, the body would not know that it must change. Through a variety of appropriate physical activity, you could offer small stresses with a lower risk of injury allowing the body to acknowledge it must change something… increase bone and muscle density, develop stable functional movements, and with all this improved cardiovascular fitness.
Through active living you can add a variety of physical activity to your daily routine for a complete body fitness; popular ones include swimming, cycling, walking (or running), and the occasional series of functional exercises spread throughout the weeks. Swimming for instance can help develop the “above our head movements” while cycling can help with developing our ability to “stand up.” Both will help us with developing our cardiovascular fitness.
As part of our daily routine we already have sleeping, eating breakfast… we should look at what we need to do to make up the bits included in active living. Let’s start with time spent doing things.
Looking at Triathlon as Cross-Training
Fitness professionals should promote benefits to adding more variety to an activity routine…
In regard to living a healthy lifestyle… functional training should be considered in the way the individual lives for the day to day and maintained for a lifetime. Training that adds stability, strength, range of motion, and cardiovascular health to the complete body. This will mean exploring more than one cardiovascular exercise and exercises that are removed from strength machines. This will mean thinking of what a person does now and in the future throughout their day.
There are many ways to develop a healthier lifestyle. This one is through adding up a variety of physical activity in a weeks’ time that would equate to a more comprehensive fitness experience.
In this article I explore the benefits of adding a variety of physical activity to an overall healthy life. It seems quite common to look for one solution that covers all issues and this also goes with the subject for fitness and health… I tried to find that when I studied the subject at university, but after graduating I quickly learned from clients that it is never that simple… each individual is just that. At the same time, I recognized how individuals develop their own opinions of what is ideal solution and what is detrimental. Or they simply have fallen in love with a sport… Walking/hiking, Running, Cycling, Swimming. I get this… at an early age in life I fell in love with running…
There should be a consideration for cross training on two parts… One is that it lowers the chances for the body to develop an overuse injury, second it adds the potential for the body to become more fully functional.
I believe there is a benefit in adding a bit of variety to an active routine Life at young and old requires a large variety of movement including the power to stand up from a chair and the flexibility to reach over our heads. A variety of activity helps us to keep a more fully functional body. They offer a variety of benefits and requirements Different activity requires different muscles being activated, different range-of-motions being reached.In this process…. swimming, cycling, and Hiking/Walking/Running can complement each other to improve functional movements of day-to-day tasks.
Here is an example of 2.5 hours of activity.
- 30 minutes of Swimming
- 1 hour 15 minutes of cycling
- 45 minutes of walking/running
More advance could maybe go to 4.5 to 8 hours of training:
- 30-60 minutes of swimming
- 2.5-4 hours of cycling
- 1.5-3 hours of walking/running
Becoming good at a sport can require a lot of training… this also means a lot of work in the same movement pattern which could lead into over training… over-use injury. A common practice to avoid over training while maintaining or even increasing fitness for that sport is Cross-Training… training with a variety of additional sports (movements) to your main sports. The variety within “Triathlon” is a great option for Swimmers, Cyclists, Runners, and many other athletes. The parts of triathlon also complement each other to improve functional movements of day-to-day tasks. If the body is a swimmer, cyclist, or runner, adding two other activities should be considered to improve fitness and lower risk of injury.
Potential benefits
- Swimming:
- non weight bearing…
- shoulder range of motion
- Core/hip stability
- Cycling
- Supported weight bearing
- Core/hip stability
- Walking/Running
- Weight bearing
- Core/hip stability
- Supporting exercises
- Range of Motion
- Stability and Power
Triathlon should be synonymous with Cross Training
Environmental Responsibility
By definition we are part of our environment. We should act like it.
Equipment
As outdoor enthusiasts we do love our natural world. There is beauty in the presence of the natural environment. Equipment/Kit has helped us explore and enjoy our natural world. We love our natural environment, but how environmentally friendly is our lifestyle.
When you are buying your equipment think of the environmental impact:
- What are the logistics of what it takes to get your item from production to you?
- What does it take to maintain your product and how long is the lifetime of that item?
- What is the Afterlife of the product like?
- Does the item you are buying have to be thrown away within 3 years?
Purchasing something at a cheaper price does not mean always that you are getting it at good value. If you must throw away and buy a new jacket every year it is neither good for your pocket nor the environment.
If you can also find ways to maintain your equipment and clothes so that it will last longer the better it is for your pocket and the environment. For instance, a lot of waterproof clothes can be retreated to improve the water repellency on the surface.
Some equipment is rebuildable so it can be fixed. Instead of throwing the whole component away and getting a new one.
Mineral Sunscreen, why is it so important…
We should not harm the environment we are training and racing in. When we wear normal Sunscreen the chemicals of the sunscreen will wash off and harm our environment, more specifically the Coral Reefs, the home of significant number of marine life. Follow this link to learn more about what sun protection to use: Mineral sunscreens: Protect yourself and the reef! (kohalacenter.org).