Never skip training

Everyone can have off days. Everyone can have off weeks, fortnights, months. When you’re training/exercising all time, and have been for a long time, it’s easy to take for granted the sense of well-being that comes with it, that good feeling, that energy. And when you’re having some time out from training for whatever reason, it’s easy to feel like you’re in a slump and forget the reason why. You could have been back off holiday, getting over an illness, or spent too much time socialising, too much time at the bar and not enough time under it.

Then you get back to training, and it’s hard all over again. The batteries aren’t what they used to be a few weeks back but you persevere. And then it hits you, that good feeling. You wake up again from that slumber, that grog of lethargy, and start feeling yourself again. And you remember. It was the benefit of exercise that kept you...you.

The body is built to work and it doesn’t like to do nothing, and it will let you know it’s not happy by making you not happy. But how easy it is to forget, how it was exercise that got you on that high. How convenient that forgetfulness is. That convenience, that forgetfulness is part of the mental health problem which lack of exercise creates, exacerbates, or fails to ameliorate.

Exercise stimulates growth. It kickstarts the metabolism. It creates new tissues, new energy pathways. Without it, without exercise, there is no stimulation, so the body begins to edge backwards to a lesser energetic state by scaling down processes, by muscle atrophy, and ultimately by creating a weaker version of you, in every sense.

Now it needn’t be sweat-dripping, lung ripping, soul-wrecking workouts. Exercise and the benefits thereof come after even a modest level of exercise. Benefits can kick in even after 15 minutes of moderate exercise, exercise that produces no sweat whatsoever. Obviously on the other hand, the more exercise you do, the more benefits you get, but even that has a limit. After 45 minutes of exercise, the returns for exercise begin to diminish.

Everyone has 15 minutes at least a few times a week. Exercise like you eat, like you breathe. It’s necessary for health, not optional.

Don’t skip exercise, whatever your exercise of choice may be. Keep being you.