It was Australian Prime Minister in the 1970s Malcolm Fraser, who said “life wasn’t meant to be easy.”
I don’t agree.
I think life should be easy and you should do everything you can to make life as easy as possible.
That doesn’t mean you don’t try to achieve great things and don’t have to work hard. That doesn’t make life easy, it just makes it a struggle. (Try living on no income)
What it means is you should always look for the easiest way to achieve your goals and dreams. How can you get what you want and do what you want, legally and ethically, with the least amount of effort.
What’s this got to do with exercise and fitness? Everything.
There are hundreds of health reasons for exercising and staying fit but I believe the most compelling reason is that it makes your life easier.
By spending 30-60 minutes a day exercising, you make the other 1380 – 1410 easier. Why? Because your body is only working at 40 or 50 percent of what it is capable of.
Imagine you are doing a job in the garden at home that requires you to move bags of mulch that weigh 30 kg. (Guess what I was doing last weekend?) If the maximum you can lift is 40 kg, you are working at 75% each time you move a bag. That sounds like hard work!
If you do regular strength training however, the maximum you could lift might be 60 kg. Now each time you move a bag, you are only working at 50%.
It will be a lot easier and you could keep doing it for longer before you get fatigued. Add to that the reduced chance of injury and it makes sense.
It’s easy to find examples involving strength, but the same principle applies to aerobic fitness. The fitter you are, the easier it is to walk to the shops, play with the kids or do your job.
Saving for retirement is about investing money now to make life easier later on. Its the same with exercise except you get the pay-off straight away. Yes, being fit will certainly make life easier as you get older but it also makes life easier now.
