Cross Training
If you are like most people, it probably makes sense that some kind of
exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. But like most people,
you probably have found that fitting it into your schedule is sometimes a
challenge. At times, our reasons are fairly
legitimate but more often than not, they are as sour as expired milk. Just like anything else in life, you have to
find a way to pay now or you are going to have to pay later.
Steven Head, health educator with Sports Therapy Services in McLean,
Virginia, doesn’t buy the “too busy” theory though. He says, “We
seem to find time for things that are important to us, no matter how busy we
are.” Ain’t it the truth?
Surveys reveal five common excuses
for not beginning an exercise program:
1) Intimidation. Peg Jordan, spokeswoman for the Aerobics and
Fitness Association in Sherman Oaks evaluated the statistics of 1,880 people about
fitness motivation and found that more than 80% saw exercise as “too
scientific, too complicated…so that beginners risked exposing their
incompetence and ineptitude.”
2) Impatience. Susan Kalish, executive director of the
American Medical Athletic Association in Bethesda, Maryland argues that “People
want a quick fix. Even though it took
them 30 years to get out of shape, when they don’t get fit overnight, they
blame their genes.”
3) Unrealistic Expectations. “People who exercise
in search of the perfect body are doomed to failure,” says Kelly Brownell,
director at the Yale University Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. “But if they are looking to become healthier,
happier, more energetic…then exercise can deliver.”
4) Denial. “Many people are in denial that health
problems could happen to them,” says Carol Kleinman, a therapist in
Maryland. “Then when they have a heart
attack or physical problem, all of a sudden they have the motivation to reorder
their priorities to exercise.”
5) Irrelevance. Pam Peeke, assistant professor of medicine at
the University of Maryland said that people falsely believe, “With today’s
technology, it’s no longer necessary to move to exist. Exercise doesn’t add to people’s income, and
many people consider it another chore to add to a time-starved life.”
Peeke adds that physical movement is essential to health, especially in
handling stress as her book, Fight Fat at Forty,
contends that sedentary living turns our natural “fight or flight” response
into an obesity-promoting “stew and chew.”
May I suggest that there is another kind of exercise that we know is
important to a healthy spiritual life, and like others, we at times neglect to
fit it into our schedules. We even tend to use all the
time-worn excuses from intimidation to irrelevance. Of course I’m referring to studying God’s
Word. Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy
3:16-17, “All scripture is God-breathed
and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the man of God may be
thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Gives a whole new meaning to the idea of “working out” your salvation,
doesn’t it?
Terry Risser
Consider reading the Word today:
Copyright 2014 - Terry Risser
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