Guide to Wellness
During my time at the University of Virginia, I took a number of classes that dealt with the subject of wellness, such as Nutrition, Uechi Ryu karate, and Weight Training. As a psychology major, I also learned a great deal about the social mentality behind the fitness craze. Of course, none of this makes me an expert, but I think it’s safe to say that my opinions are more educated than most. Below I’ve compiled a short guide to fitness based on my collected knowledge that you may find useful.
Cardiovascular Fitness
Here is a list of the top ten causes of mortality in the United States.
- Heart Disease (37.8%)
- Cancer (19.3%)
- Stroke (10.3%)
- Accidents (Non-Auto) (3.0%)
- Influenza (Pneumonia) (2.9%)
- Motor Vehicle Accidents (2.4%)
- Diabetes (1.9%)
- Liver Disease (1.7%)
- Arteriosclerosis (1.5%)
- Suicide (1.4%)
I hope you noticed the items in bold. Fully 49.6%, almost half, of deaths in the United States are caused by cardiovascular conditions, many times more than automobile accidents, cancer, or illness. This situation is due primarily to the sedentary lifestyle that most Westerners enjoy. The lesson, then, should be pretty straightforward. If you do only one thing to help improve your health, get up and be active.
It doesn’t take a college education to know how to run, so I won’t bother posting a guide to cardiovascular fitness here. The only real trick, I find, is making sure that you enjoy what you’re doing. I hate to go jogging, but I’ll gladly run around with my LARPing group in mock combat. Find an activity that you love and that you can do a few times a week and you can keep that heart pumping for years to come.
Dieting & Nutrition
When I took Nutrition in my final semester, I started looking at food labels. I discovered very quickly just how much excess sugar and salt was in a typical Western diet. I also found out how little nutrition there is in many packaged foods, even those that tout their nutritional merits. It pays to educate yourself on the importance of nutrients and exactly what you put into your body every day.
Unfortunately, nowadays it seems like there are millions of fads and marketing slogans that do nothing but hide the truth. Why eat correctly and exercise when you could take a few pills of phentermine every day and accomplish all of your fitness goals? It’s sad that the $8-billion secret to dieting is that there is no secret. All it takes is a little consideration and self-control. Reduce your input, increase your output, and make sure to get a variety of nutrient-dense foods. That’s it. Anything more than that is probably an advertisement designed to deprive the foolish and desperate dieter of his or her money.
I won’t go into anything more than that on dieting and nutrition. There are far too many such guides on the internet already. Just take everything with a metaphorical grain of salt and try to recognize fad dieting for what it really is.
Weight Training
In my experience, you can approach weight training with one of three goals in mind: Endurance, leanness, or strength. If you’re an athlete, endurance and/or strength may be more desirable. However, the average person who goes to the gym does so for two reasons, to promote health and to improve appearance. Both of these can be accomplished by increasing leanness. Nutritional studies have proven that leanness promotes longevity, and it is well-known that lean muscle increases your basal metabolic rate (BMR), so you burn more fat while at rest.
Weight training for lean muscle is fairly straightforward. You should develop a regimen of exercises that work as wide a variety of muscle groups as possible. To keep things simple, try your best to cover the following areas:
- Chest
- Shoulders
- Back
- Biceps
- Triceps
- Forearms
- Abdomen
- Sides
- Lower back
- Butt
- Front thigh
- Rear thigh
- Calves
This list is thirteen items long, and depending on who you ask there may be other areas of particular importance. Generally speaking, then, a workout regimen of sufficient breadth is around 12 to 15 exercises long. Keep in mind that not all of these exercises need to be done in one session. I have experimented with full regimens (i.e. all exercises in one session) and alternating regimens (i.e. half of the exercises in one session, half in another) and experienced comparable results with both, so try what works best for you.
The amount of weight that you use for these exercises is ultimately a function of the number of sets and repetitions that you want. For leanness, you should do each exercise in two to four sets of eight to twelve repetitions each. You should use the same amount of weight for each set of a particular exercise. Try to use enough weight so that you have to strain to finish the final set, but not so much that you can’t finish at all. Don’t take too long of a break between sets. A one- or two-minute wait is optimal.
The most important aspect of the regimen, of course, is how frequently you actually perform it. If you prefer a full regimen, try to perform three to four sessions a week as evenly as possible. If you prefer an alternating regimen, try to perform a session every day. Either way, this should account for three to four full regimen repetitions each week.
Since most people don’t have home weight sets, you’ll probably be working out at a gym of some kind. Remember that your goal is health and/or appearance, not ego. Working out at your own pace and with your optimal weights will help you become lean. Trying to work out to impress or compete will help you hurt yourself. The only real measure of success is how you feel about your own progress.