Steve Haywood Health & Fitness

Get your bicycle out of the garage

I recently wrote an article about nature’s high. This was about how exercise can secrete feel-good chemistry in your body with even mild exercise. This is part of achieving what I have called “the positive cycle”. When training people and giving advice about exercise I believe it is a good method to give imagery to people. It’s far easier to picture something rather than try to memorise words.

A lot of people are in the “negative cycle” both mentally and physically, this is not a criticism but an observation. For example take someone who is pressured at work so they smoke to cope even though they don’t want to, they have stopped exercising because when they get home they feel exhausted. Whatever your version of the cycle or wheel , imagine it is going the wrong direction, taking you backwards.

Now, those of you who can associate with this picture, imagine you are going to start taking some positive steps to firstly stop the backward motion. The first thing is to find time for yourself to exercise, something you can enjoy, it could be a jog or skipping or a class. You can find time, chief executives and presidents make time, and even better if you can find a like-minded person or people to share this with.

The first step is now completed, you have arrested the backwards motion, you feel better mentally already and are going start the forward motion, the positive cycle. The feel good chemistry has begun to kick in and you are seeing that because you feel better physically and mentally you are more alert, more efficient and are actually doing more in the day than you did before, even though you are now taking an hour out of the day just for you.

Now you are on a roll, the forward motion almost has a life of its own and you are looking forward to the challenges in life, you can handle them with energy to spare. Start today. Enjoy