Health Fitness Program

Just enough movement and proper use of the whole body
Too much body use wears the muscles and joints down; not enough body use makes the body weak and unhealthy.

Anyone who works in injury rehab clinics will tell you that they see their share of manual laborers whose hands or wrists are injured from the repetitive or jarring use of a particular tool.

They also see hard-core athletes whose bodies are just broken from overuse: marathon runners with bad knees or hips; dancers with broken feet; and baseball pitchers with messed-up elbows or shoulders. Not to belittle the sacrifices of people who just want to provide for their families or are on a quest for personal excellence, but the cause of their injuries is usually wear and tear, plain and simple.

The ultimate goal in relation to getting the most mileage out of the human vehicle is to engage all body parts on a regular basis, but not too much. Our bodies, besides eliminating wastes and procreating, were biologically designed to occasionally, over the course of a day, a week, or a season, gather food, hunt, run from being hunted, roam long distances, climb, build shelters.

In doing just enough of all of these actions on a regular basis, we were able to provide all the necessities of life, which in turn had good effects on our bodies that allowed them to remain strong and healthy so they could do it all again the next time.

In knowing that, work all of your muscles AND bones, at least once a week, if not twice. This means that over the course of 4–5 workouts a week (30–45 minutes each workout), I make sure that you exercise all of my body parts in the many ways they were designed for or capable of doing: pushing, pulling, lifting, squatting, walking, short bursts of running (since the body was designed for chasing prey or running from predators), twisting, stretching, kicking, punching, throwing, catching, climbing, skipping, jumping, swimming, and so on. If you are being active, whether you’re playing a sport, engaging in vigorous gardening or intense landscaping, moving lumber and tools around while building something, hiking, or playing with the kids, count that as a workout.

Workouts
The best way to keep the body fit and contribute to a happy healthy life is to use a fusion fitness type workout. Fusion fitness means that during the course of a workout incorporate many different fitness exercises from different disciplines, simulating the actions of various body movements such as used in yoga, martial arts, farming, building a dwelling, Pilates, various sports, and so on. For example, after a good warm up and stretch, a typical workout might look like this:

Exercises with safe weights just heavy enough to exert your body:

• picking up a bale of hay with a proper lift, twisting, and "throwing" the bale up to the loft (20 reps in each direction)
  
• pause to stretch and recover
  
• slow motion tennis serves (20 reps each on left- and right-hand serves)
  
• pause to stretch and recover
  
• one-legged squats
  
• plain bicep curls, but on one foot with a slight twist
  
• pause to stretch and recover

• martial arts kicking and punching (a few intense minutes)
  
• 5-inch push-ups (40 reps)
  
• pause to stretch and recover
  
• various yoga postures, holding position and focusing on the breathing to slow the heart rate (30–60 seconds)
  
• one hand push-ups (hold each for 20 seconds, then switch hands)
  
• pause to stretch and recover
  

Cool down:

• stretching
  
• yoga postures
  
• regeneration meditation (5-10 minutes)

Also, if you are in the gym and working with weights, mix up the intensity of the workout by sometimes using extremely heavy weight and sometimes just heavy enough to do ten reps or so.

The human body has basically three different muscle fibers that are capable of a wide range of activities such as simply maintaining posture or running fast or lifting something heavy.

In some workouts, move through a wide range of motions to incorporate all muscles, and once every week or two team up with a buddy to lift or push super-heavy weights. For sample workouts and more information on using the body, you can check out this link.