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Saturday 25 February 2012

New Challenges


Do we need to challenge ourselves for fitness and health?

I think it is important to keep challenging ourselves in order to keep our fitness levels up. Challenges change over time as we develop. The second part of this blog will address a new challenge of my own, but the first part will look into challenging ourselves with regard to our fitness and health goals.

Why Challenge Ourselves?

The first reason that we should challenge ourselves is to improve. The only way we can develop and improve is to keep challenging ourselves and our body. Once we can do, for example, five press ups the only way we can develop our body further is to increase the challenge of press ups. This can be done through increasing the number of repetitions we can do and/or adding to the weight we are pressing (weight on the back, for example). These principles can apply to all fitness and health goals.

Secondly, having targets and goals gives us motivation as we have something to aim for. Motivation is one of the key things with keeping fit and staying healthy. Without motivation we would sit around all day and eat poorly. Simple!

Having challenges also makes it easier to see progress and performance. With having targets we have something that we can measure. For example, if we are aiming to be able to run for 20 minutes within 2 months this can be measured. After 1 month we can see how much progress we have made.

Achieving challenges is another great thing for our body and mind. When we complete the challenges we set ourselves our confidence grows and this leads to more challenges and more improvement!!

My New Challenge

When I first started with the gym and training it was to get in better shape for playing football. I then had weight issues and I got myself back down and in decent shape. Over the last couple of years I have been maintaining a healthy weight and fitness level, which is good, but I have had no real new challenges. I have decided, therefore, to do a 6mile charity run for Sports Relief. The money raised goes to help people in the UK and some of the poorest countries in the World.

What is Sport Relief?

Sport Relief is a charity event from Comic Relief that is associated with BBC Sport and aims to bring together the sporting world and the entertainment world in the name of charity. The event that I am taking part in is known as the Sport Relief Mile (participants can select whether to do 1, 3 or 6 miles). Sainsbury is the official sponsor of the Sport Relief Mile.

I’m No Runner

Although I do run for football, I am certainly not a runner. I have always tried to avoid running (not while playing football though) at all costs. However, recently I have had a change of heart and I have become quite interested in wanting to do a long distance run. This is the first of (hopefully) many runs that I will be doing. It is a fairly short one, but you’ve got to start somewhere! I am thinking of writing updates and posting in my blog of my training. 

My first training session will be tomorrow!

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