What is the best exercise?
PourquoiPas / Pixabay – What is the best exercise?

A headline caught my attention this morning. “657 reasons why sex is the best exercise.” Naturally, it caught my attention. There are 657 muscles in the human body and sex uses each one of them.

It takes 38 muscles to text, 99 muscles to sprint and 137 muscles to drive a golf ball down the fairway. Our bodies lose around three to five percent muscle mass each decade after 30 years of age. Additionally, exercise is required for good health. Those who do not exercise can expect to see an 20-30% increase in age-related diseases and early death.

I read in a FB post this morning the following statement. The definition of HELL. “On your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.” It also caught my attention. I thought about for a moment and then wrote it down.

Exercise is important. Exercise doesn’t have to be lifting weights an hour a day in the gym. It doesn’t have to be running 3-5 miles daily. It doesn’t have to leave you dripping with sweat when you are done. Exercise comes with many options. We need different types of exercise to be healthy, especially as we age. They include strength-building exercises, balance, endurance and flexibility.

My wife and I completed a 500-mile walk across northern Spain (the Camino de Santiago) a few months back. We trained nearly every other day by simply walking. We thought we were in good shape to being this trek. And, we were.

However, Houston doesn’t have many hills. We could have included exercises to build up the muscles we needed to climb hills (and mountains), yet we didn’t think about it. We completed the journey in a little over a month. We had no blisters or feet/leg problems along the way. There were many who did.

Each of us is growing older every day. Most of us tend to put off things till tomorrow – human nature and habit. We work on our perceived priorities. Exercise is generally not a perceived priority for us. If you want to be the person you could have become when you are leaving this world, you need to make some serious choices as to what is important in your life. Choices have consequences. As the old Fram Oil Filter commercial used to say, “Pay me now, or pay me later.” Your future health depends on how much you pay now.

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