Dr. Brett Hill - Eat Think Move Chiropractic

In our modern lifestyles many of us spend way too much time sitting and don't get anywhere near enough exercise. In fact one of the most common questions I get from people is, ‘How much exercise is enough?'

We often hear that we should be doing half an hour of walking a day to keep our heart healthy, but what about the rest of our body? Obviously walking is only one form of exercise and doesn't test our strength, power, balance or coordination. So obviously there is more to it than that.

You don't need anyone to teach you how to run, right? Well, that's what I thought until recently, when I realised that for most of the first 30 years of my life I have been doing it wrong. It had never made sense to me that running was considered such an unhealthy activity in terms of the effects of the impact on your body, or that so many people were getting injuries just from running. After all, once upon a time it was the only way we could get around. Did the Kalahari bushmen suffer from knee degeneration or Iliotibila band syndrome? Somehow I think not.

When most people think about power training, they think of massive overinflated body builders glistening with fake tan shaping up in front of a mirror. However power training is about a lot more than that, and is important for people of all ages.

One thing people often get confused about is the difference between power and strength. Strength is the amount of force you can produce (i.e. how much weight can you lift) whereas power includes the element of speed (i.e how fast can you lift/push/pull it).

There is a lot of confusion nowadays about cardiovascular (endurance) exercise. Some people will say that it is the be-all and end-all, whilst others say that we don't even need to do it at all. And as is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

There is no doubt that our bodies are made to move. We are not designed to be anywhere near as stationary as we are in our modern lives, and as a result we now have to actually work hard to achieve cardiovascular fitness (which would have been part of daily life for our ancestors). In fact I read one study recently that said that even our country cousins on the farm are now not getting enough daily exercise since the advent of modern machinery.