Bodybuilding.com - Exercise And The Mind!

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Learn about how important the mind is when it comes to exercise, dedication, focus and achieving your goals! Read on to discover some helpful tips to utilize your mind to it's fullest!

By: Peter Knopfler

You are what you eat. You become what you think. You love as you are. You are what you do. You do what you desire.

The body is a third dimensional picture of who you are, what you think and what you do. The body is a reflection of the sum total of who you are.

We humans stand on the last frontier, the inward journey. You will discover the laws of the universe in your body.

Progressive resistance (weight training) might help you learn: balance, strength, flexibility, speed, power, agility, patience, tolerance, determination, honesty, concentration, humbleness, kindness, alertness, intensity, discipline, respect, loyalty.

Who does not want these attributes? The moment of truth vibrating and weaving new possibilities.

One can not discover new oceans without losing sight of the shore.

Exercise To Improve Your Life

Although genetics still plays an important role in living to a ripe old age, it is increasingly clear that you can modulate the quality of your life and even take several steps toward prolonging it, exercise being a giant step. Here are some more benefits.

Exercise helps delay the loss in the ability to take in and process oxygen that occurs with age. The loss is about 10% every ten years after the age of 30. But exercise can actually increase your oxygen max and produce again in function equivalent to rolling back your years by 15.

Exercise can slow the progression of osteo-arthritis in many cases and actually improve the state of your cartilage in others. Exercise pumps blood into and around your joint structures, and blood is life. Exercise can retard the process of bone loss (osteoporosis).

Endurance exercise like, fast-paced circuit weight training, walking, swimming can lower hypertension 15%.

Exercise contributes to a sense of self-esteem and well-being. Exercise improves quality of sleep. Added oxygen to the brain, helps in mental balance and emotional stability. Exercise helps all cases of lower back pain, helps recover from injuries and surgery. Exercise shows a lower risk in colon cancer in men, and breast cancer in women.

Moderate and vigorous exercise is best for lowering blood pressure. The risk factor for adult diabetes is lessened with exercise by 1/3. Studies show that weight loss lessens the risk of arthritis and heart disease. Exercise will increase a range of motion and lessen the pain of joints. Exercise is the best healer.

Some more tips:

Use short efficient workouts to stay motivated.
Keep your workouts hard but brief. Place a higher value on intensity than on duration.
Try to exercise in the morning when you are fresh and not under too much unnecessary stress.
Always warm up and stretch to avoid pain and injury.
The most important is consistency. Pick something you can do regularly and stick with it!

Another important component of fitness is aerobic conditioning.

Here are some ideas to give you the benefit of aerobic exercise without retarding your muscle gains.

Limit strenuous aerobic movements to 30 minutes per session 4 times a week.
Prolonged endurance exercise can destroy muscle tissue.
Practice different forms of aerobic exercise to distribute equal stress to different parts of the body. Example: running, biking, rowing, climbing, skating, step, treadmill, skipping, basketball and swimming are just a few.
Include bursts of high intensity muscular effort in every aerobic session. For instance, when you ride a bike or run, include some sprinting in your session.

Knowledge Is The Key

Knowledge is like the seed of plants. Keep it tucked away, and the seed is eventually worthless. Plant it, cultivate it and nourish it, and you will enjoy the splendor of the flowers. This will bring more seeds, because you made good use of the first.

Knowledge as with everything else we must give in order to receive. As we exercise, we find more meaning and purpose in our lives, we experience a renewed energy and a sense of fulfillment and we no longer use food as a consolation.

We eat to live, rather than live to eat.

We realized that the mind has the ability to advise the body and that many bodily functions are actually signals from the brain, which is the life support system for the mind. We also learn that thoughts are subtle forms of energy. And that everything that is manmade came originally from a thought.

Use Your Mind For Motivation

Can you see thoughts?

Now consider for a moment the material world around us, including our bodies. What is the cause of all that we see? Contemplate who it is that observes and notices all the things around us.

Who is that Invisible I inside our bodies?

If we examine ourselves and out of this state of investigation we look at, what is most important in our life - Trust, Honesty, Peace, Freedom, Loyalty, Respect, Confidence, Courage, and Humbleness. To most of us all of this is very important, yet very invisible or unseen.

Even love goes unseen unless followed by action. So what is really important to some of us, are the invisible, unseen, immaterial, no-things in life; and many times in our lives these no-things become more important than our some-things. This is the beginning of our understanding of spirit.

The Spirit has a thought, which created the mind; the mind has thoughts, which created the body. The spirit is the foundation, this unseen world is the source of all that is visible.

Let's observe ourselves scientifically and we will discover that we are not our own creation. Let's go back to conception, as one drop of human protoplasm, colliding with another, resulting in the form of an embryo and then you evolved.

If you turn up the magnification in the microscope and look further into those human protoplasm you'll find atoms, electrons, sub-atomic particles; then further magnification you'll find vibrating waves that come and go, these waves are mostly unseen. The source of all is therefore nothing since it is not in the dimension of the measurable.

Your own creative abilities originate in the unseen mind. In the unseen world of waves and energy called thoughts. So what has all this to do with health? Many of us try to exercise daily, join a gym, start jogging and attend aerobic classes. And some of us actually try to eat properly and try to stay away from abusive habits. However, it seems that with the majority of us, the gym and the good nutrition is short lived.

In my experience, 90 percent of the people never make it to the eighth week. Some four percent last up to six months, make wonderful changes, but then go back to poor habits and non-attendance when it comes to exercise.

Without the involvement of spirit, consistent exercise, correct nutrition and positive thinking is very short lived.

Very few have inspiration (in the spirit). Spirit gives you strength when your mind and body gives up. Spirit is what separates the genius from the ordinary. Spirit is what creates champions.

No need to look up - look within, it's right there, invisible and unseen.

Thanks,

the_knopf@hotmail.com