How does training for your sedentary lifestyle should look like?
Training for your lifestyle is something most people ignore. This isn’t to say everyone is overtraining, but I guarantee most people aren’t training properly for their lifestyle. Physical health involves a myriad of strategies all combined to create your own physical lifestyle.
So, what does training for your lifestyle truly look like?
Most regular gym-goers go to the gym day in and day out and go through the motions. This isn’t who you want to be. This is where I highlight the personal training industry as a helpful tool to guide you to the proper execution of your goals and aspirations.
So how do we change the attitude that coming to the gym is just something you do to be ‘healthy’?
We must highlight what health means specifically to you. This is where hiring a trainer or coach greatly increases your chances of hitting the goals you have set for yourself. If you haven’t set goals, any good trainer will help you access the emotional part of yourself attached to creating purposeful goals.
Throughout this process, we cannot understate the importance of goal setting in training for your lifestyle. That’s because, after all, our lifestyle is largely built off the goals we set, either directly or indirectly.
Lifestyle, summed up, includes everything you choose to do in a day. Plus the things you have to do.
So, saying you live an active lifestyle because you hike lots in the summer and ski every weekend in the winter, but you work at a desk for 8 hours a day, is counterintuitive to creating healthy training habits.
Lifestyle must include every aspect of your life, especially your own ergonomics.
If you spend 40 hours per week sitting at a desk without a regular amount of stretching and walking during your workday going to the gym and pushing as hard as you can, may be to your own detriment.
You are essentially un-conditioning your body during those long hours sitting still at work, then proceeding to push your body to its upper limits a few scheduled times per week. Does this sound healthy?
If your lifestyle is sedentary, you should incorporate an extensive warm-up training, including various mobility exercises to make sure your stiffened joints are prepared to be put through a range of motion with weights now. Sedentary people are highly encouraged to contribute to their own physical health through regular exercise.
As a sedentary individual, it is your responsibility to make sure your body is properly warmed up and prepped for whatever activities you plan on doing.
A cool down including muscular inhibition should also be a regular part of a sedentary individuals programming. Muscular inhibition refers to things like foam rolling. This is an effective way to help everything stay mobile and workout muscle knots.
Working a sedentary job makes it even more important to exercise regularly.
This said, you need to work around your limitations and bodily abilities after sitting in the same position all day. Don’t just go to the gym and simply go through the motions. Also, don’t go to the gym and blast yourself without a proper warmup and cooldown.
Remember: the length of your warmup and cooldown can change day to day. This depends on how you feel on that specific day and the positions you have put yourself in prior to training.
Train for health.
