Today's topic is the first part of a series on balance. In this instance, we will focus on finding balance between effort and rest in life. The uninterested and hyper-busy do not exercise, and eventually find that health problems come from inactivity. Those that are new to fitness struggle to work out a few times a week, becoming frustrated with the lack of progress but limited by post-workout soreness (or even worse, pain). On the other side of the spectrum, many dedicated athletes work out six or even seven days a week and push through injury after injury, accepting a poorer quality of life as a trade off for doing what they love. And somewhere in between those two extremes are the weekend warriors, those that barely get in anything during the week and brutalize themselves on the few days that they can.
Many new and prospective clients, as well as casual acquaintances that find out that I am a personal trainer, ask about the frequency of their workouts. Like most questions, I find that there is not a simple, one fits all answer. If the goal is to stay healthy and fit, three to four workouts every week allows the body to maintain its current level of fitness and health, with a gradual improvement in the activities and skills that are undertaken on a frequent and consistent basis. This allows for adequate time for recuperation and rebuilding. For the many whose goal is positive and noticeable change, either appearance alteration or gain in ability, five to six workouts a week is closer to ideal.
Whenever I think of balance, I recall a lesson my martial art teacher once imparted to me; the lesson of yin and yang. This concept is familiar to many, but not necessarily well-understood. Yin and yang are not separate things that oppose each other, but the opposite sides of a spectrum that can be applied to any concept. A key part of this philosophy is that nothing can become completely one-sided; the more one falls to any one extreme, the more that elements of its opposite come through.
In regards to exercise, there is a limit to the amount of repetitions a muscle can undergo before it fails to fire. There is a limit to the amount of days that one can exercise in a row before the body becomes injured and must rest. On the other side of the spectrum, if no strenuous activity is undertaken for a long time period, eventually tasks that were easy become difficult. Many have found that they do not have the energy to keep up with their children. Older individuals have difficulty walking up a flight of stairs. For morbidly obese individuals, getting out of bed is incredibly difficult. In other words, use it or lose it.
