Awareness

Awareness is the foundation of a successful exercise practice.

An exercise practice requires different aspects of awareness.

Self Awareness allows one to ask questions and discover answers.  Who am I?  Why do I wish to exercise?  What do I want to achieve from exercise?  Am I honest with my exercise goals?  Am I really exercising for health reasons or do I only care about how my abs look? Does that matter?  What kind of exercise do I like?  What kind of exercise am I apt to stick with?

Awareness of your time schedule helps you to recognize potential, exercise-rich  time periods.  This awareness also helps you to "create" exercise time periods where none existed initially.  Example: you started getting up 10 minutes earlier and shortened your morning shower from 10 minutes to 5 minutes thus yielding an extra 15 minutes in the morning.  Enough time for interval training!

Environmental Awareness is simply viewing your environment(s) with the critical, skilled eye of the "guerilla" or "opportunistic" exerciser.  Examples:  you notice the staircase at your office building and now you walk up the 3 flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator.  Or you notice that the benches in the break room are perfect for hamstring stretches.  Or you notice that a doorframe in your house is perfect for removable pull-up bar and your empty doorway becomes a powerful tool for upper body strength.

Kinesthetic and proprioceptive awareness is, loosely speaking, your body awareness in movement and rest.  It is the feedback loop(s) between your mind and body and your body to mind.  It is you feeling your body, expressing through your body and that which allows you to say "I like to [insert favorite exercise here] because I love how it feels!"

It is awareness that lifts exercise from just a set of mechanical movements to a potentially amazing somato-psycho-spiritual practice.   Or, if you just love and want the plain, mechanical repetitions and the burn after...that's good too! 

***DISCLAIMER- This blog is for informational purposes only .   Always seek your doctor’s advice before beginning any exercise program.