How is your Fitness?

Fitness

What is exercise? Why is it important? The answer to these questions are really simple. Exercise can simply be walking around your neighborhood or more advanced running a few miles and doing things to make you sweat. Exercise is very important for your health, for your body and it is just a good thing to do. Everyone should exercise at least once a day. It doesn’t matter how old you are, from toddlers to grandparents exercising is good for you and easy to do.

For toddlers and elementary kids exercise is extremely important. Your body is growing and you need to be outside running around even if you are just playing tag around the playground at recess. During middle school is when kids begin to stop exercising because in middle school we no longer have recess. Unless a child plays a sport for their school they only have gym to get exercise or to exercise on their own at home. To be honest not many kids just go on a run when they get home from school as of I know, they want to hang out with friends and play video games. As we get older and enter high school the population of kids that go out for sports and stick it out for all four years is a small number. High school gym classes are a joke so the kids that have to take gym because they don’t do a sport don’t get near as much exercise that their bodies need to be getting.

Playing a sport in college is extremely rare and the kids that aren’t playing a sport are so overwhelmed with the tremendous amount of homework that they have that they don’t have time to exercise and not to mention that exercising is the last thing on their mind. This is one of the reasons for the “Freshman 15”. Former high school athletes that don’t continue to play a sport in high school are probably the ones that gain the most weight in college because there body is used to running and being at practice every day burning calories. Speaking from experience; I play 4 sports competitively all year round and when I broke my foot and was out for four months, I put on at least 15 pounds. When I came back and began playing my sports again I lost the weight I gained but every move I made was just that much harder because I hadn’t exercised in what seemed like a century. 

As an elder or being 55 or older is when your body really begins to slow down. To stay in shape and keep your health up you can exercise. It’s not a hard thing to do, just walk down the street and back to get your heartbeat up and burn some calories. It may not seem like much but it will pay off in the long run. (487)