How to be a Man of Fitness?

“ Those who think they have no time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness. “ Edward Stanley

How true is that? Increasing in our busy sedentary lifestyle many of us are quickly getting to the point with inactivity and laziness that our own physical health has started to deteriorate.

Are you going to sit back and let that happen in the hope that someday you will not end up in some hospital diagnosed for being overweight, worse than that is being told that you are suffering from cardiovascular problems or some other serious illness which you may have avoided if only, you lived a healthy active lifestyle.

Being fit is the ability of a person to do his normal everyday tasks with full alertness and vitality without feeling fatigued afterwards and with remaining extra energy in reserve which can be useful when emergencies arise or during leisure and recreation. Overall fitness must be the primary goal every man must try to achieve. In fitness, no one is ever too young or too old for improvement.

When you maintain an optimum level of fitness you continue to be proactive in all your day to day chores and still have energy to go to the gym spend time taking walks with your family and many other activities which would be very difficult if you were not fit.

An example is you have just arrived at your office the car park is some 10 yards distance from the office; you need to carry in a laptop. You start walking towards the office with your laptop bag and you arrive at the reception, sadly the lift is out of order so, now you need to walk up to the 3^rd floor.  This activity for someone who is fit can be quite easy and will not result in them gasping for air.  But in your case you’re not that fit, by the time you arrive on the 3^rd floor, your heart rate has increased by 40-50%, your all hot and sweaty, gasping for air and you feel pain in your legs and arms.  This is because your body is trying hard to cope with this strenuous climb.

One's fitness can be improved by engaging in aerobic exercises and through strength training. There are three components of overall fitness that every man must focus on working out in order to be in healthy, tip-top shape.

These are:

You need to stay strong by building muscles. Man's fitness routine should include a workout regime which aims to build the muscles. Aging causes a decrease in muscle mass of five to seven pounds which is equivalent 2-3.2 kgs of muscle for every ten years in one's adult life given that he lives an inactive lifestyle. The saying "use it or lose it" is very applicable to the muscles. Fortunately, there is a good solution to this. Loss of muscle mass can be replaced by taking regular lessons in strength training and eating the rite food.

You can improve your overall fitness by cardiovascular workout, try to do high intensity training (HIT) if you are short for time or don’t want to develop endurance. Flexibility exercises, strength training and cardiovascular workout surely help boost a man's fitness and all these should be part of a man's work out scheme.

If you do not have much time for working out for a long time, devoting whatever free time he might have to aerobic exercises would do you fine. It might mean passing out on developing those biceps but so long as cardiovascular workout exercises are done, then the blood pressure, heart and cholesterol levels will be fine to keep you staying happy and healthy.

Nutrition to man's fitness is also a very big player. Those long hours in the office and stuck in traffic jams, then a late night binge on junk food – not good to your health.  It is best and recommended to eat whole and natural foods frequently. Always keep variety in mind when doing the shopping. This will ensure that one is getting most if not all of the nutrients and minerals needed by the body to keep fit and healthy, top it up with multivitamins supplements.  Always keep the three important macronutrients in the diet; these are fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Prioritize proteins though over carbohydrates but never exclude any one of the three on some diet.

Some tips in keeping a man's fitness level high, efficient and safe: