Fitness in Small Steps

One of the fatal mistakes that many people make when they’re deciding to get into shape is to tackle the entire concept of “fitness” at one time. Incorporating fitness into your life takes time and won’t happen overnight. Your body, mind, and spirit need time to adjust to the many changes that will be happening as you start to add exercise to your daily routine. This is why fitness in small steps is so important and will ensure that you’re less likely to quit when you become overwhelmed with the changes in your life.

The first thing that you need to do is start moving. If you haven’t been active in a while you’ll want to start by adding walking to your day. You need to walk for at least 30 minutes each day before you start to see changes in your fitness level. You may decide that you want to continue walking after you’ve become more fit, or you may decide that you want to start power walking or hiking so that you can start to increase your fitness level.

Make sure that you invest in a good pair of walking shoes so that your feet are well supported and cushioned as you walk. If you get sore feet from walking you won’t want to continue your fitness routine. You might also want to buy a pedometer so that you can keep track of how far you walk each day.

For the first couple of weeks stick to the same walking routine so that you get used to some type of fitness. You should measure the distance that you walk, as well as how long it takes you each day to walk this distance, so that you have a measuring stick against which you can calculate your fitness progress. After a couple of weeks you can add some distance to the original total so that you’re slowly starting to walk more and more each week. This way you won’t injure yourself by attempting to do more than your body is ready for.

Besides your daily walking routine you can find any and all ways to get moving. This means taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking your car around the corner from your destination and walking a block or two, and leaving your car at home whenever you can. Your goal for fitness is to get moving and to keep moving.

After a couple months of taking the above small steps towards fitness you’ll start to see a significant change in your fitness level. You’ll find that you feel better, have more energy, are sleeping more soundly, and feel better about yourself.

Chinese Forms of Exercise

There are specific Chinese forms of exercise that you will want to concentrate on when are introducing Chinese medicine into your life. These forms of Chinese exercise include:

• T’ai Chi. This form of Chinese exercise uses movement to achieve peace and harmony in your mind and body.
• Martial arts. Use a variety of marital arts, such as Kung Fu, to incorporate exercise into your daily routine.
• Qi Gong. This form of Chinese activity combines breathing exercises and mental exercises to prevent as well as treat health problems and disease.

The more different types of exercise that you can include in your week the most results you will see in your level of physical health. The combination of diet and exercise are very important parts of Chinese medicine.