General Fitness
General Fitness always involves aesthetics and that is invariably the symmetry of the body. It is the relative proportion of the body that makes it appealing to the human eye. What differentiates SSL's approach to general fitness is that our routines don't leave you feeling beat up, tight and dreading the next work out. The workouts leave you feeling invigorated, mentally stimulated, flexible and work the entire body as the all the exercises are integrated not isolated in terms of the muscles they work.
The concept of being physically fit starts and ends with the food you eat. You truly are made up of what you eat so it is imperative to make sure that you become educated in proper nutrition. Excess body weight is always stored at the middle of a person's body as it is the easiest place for the body to hold it. To get rid of your excess body mass it is a simple equation. You are going to need to spend more energy then you are ingesting. You are an enclosed pressurized system that is dependent on it's metabolic rate to determine the speed with which you burn up your food. The nutrient value of your food plays a huge role in determining your metabolic rate. The higher quality food you eat, the less of it you need to eat as your body gets what it needs. The lower the quality the more you need to ingest to get the nutrients you need. Obese people are actually starving to death and have to eat high volume in order to get what they need.
The next thing to understand is the important role that water plays in keeping you healthy and fit. Clean water will become the world's most precious commodity very soon as it is rapidly declining in availability. Clean water is essential for proper metabolism as it is either removed from certain molecules or used to break the bonds of other molecules. The human body can be as much as 78% water so keeping it replenished is essential to staying healthy. Water is considered the universal solvent as so many things are broken down by water. Drinking 2 liters per day at a minimum is considered essential to staying healthy. In sports keeping hydrated is nothing short of essential.
Exercise is the next piece of this puzzle and there are countless theories touting the benefits of their exercise regimens. However if you again choose logic then it is easy to simplify this process. The pressurized system of the body needs to be constantly stimulated in different ways in order to avoid plateauing. The cardiovascular network of the body needs to be moving constantly to burn more energy and that requires a higher heart rate. As the demands of your exercise level rises the body pumps more blood and oxygen in and out of the muscles to keep up with the work output. In an optimal world your exercise regimen will not only raise your metabolism burning more energy but also do so without leaving you feeling broken down. Flexibility, joint mobility, muscle symmetry, coordination, muscle mass, balance all play an important role in leaving you feeling physically fit. The obsession with muscle size in most gyms ignores most of the things needed to achieve true physical fitness.
The Ballwork and Poolwork programs are widely used at SSL by our athletes to improve coordination, muscle balance and symmetry, flexibility, and joint mobility and can be done in a private setting or gym setting as the equipment requirements are simple. The intensity of these programs determines it use as a warmup, full body workout or rehabilitative tool. What separates these programs from other exercise regimens is they truly incorporate the entire body in the routine. They highly emphasize core stabilization while stretching and strengthening the limbs which highly stimulates and challenges the nervous system. The human body moves in different planes and different ranges and therefore any exercise program should improve those, these programs do that better than any I know of.
