We may wonder why more people do not participate in a proper exercise program especially when it could mean the difference between good health and wellness and illness and disease.

Everyone wants to kick back and relax, but too much bonding time with the couch and TV remote control can cause severe health problems somewhere down the track. This lifestyle is known as a sedentary life and involves just doing light activities such as housework and every day chores, walking, and of course sitting – a whole lot of sitting.

It has become so serious that the World Health Organization has newly estimated that between 60 and 85 percent of people in our world internationally lead sedentary lifestyles. They also issued a caution that an inactive lifestyle could be one of the world’s most important causes of disability and death and are now identifying a sedentary lifestyle as a disease.

The human body functions best when it is kept strong and active. It is this vigorous movement that triggers the chemicals necessary to instruct every cell, tissue, organ and system in the body to renew, replace, rebuild and repair. Without this stimulus there is a ‘shutdown’ mode which means a downward spiral of declining health and vitality.

This process although takes 20 or more years greatly reduces the quality of life for the person going through it. We used to believe that this was a natural part of aging and there was nothing we could do to stop it. But now we do for sure this is the result of our modern sedentary lifestyles.

We can get through each day without having to do any hard physical activity and we now think that this is how our lives should be. Well, they may be nice and easy and we don’t have to exert ourselves but at what cost? We are now passing this situation on to future generations with children being born today being predicated to have a 20 -30 year shortened lifespan.

 Although we are leaving them massive advances in technology we are also leaving them the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. We have the opportunity to turn this around and instead teach them that we have to balance the seated and inactive nature of our technological lives with enough muscle building and maintaining activity to stay healthy.

The only way to do this is to perform a proper exercise program that contains strength training exercise 2-3 times per week to keep the human body functioning well and healthy. It is important that this program is taught by a fitness professional that not only teaches how to do the exercises but also teaches the intensity level (degree of difficulty) the exercises need to be performed at. If this is not done correctly there will be poor, if any results.

We surely would want to leave the children of tomorrow the healthy benefits of proper exercise. We have it in our power to educate them and be good role models to them when they see us adults rating our strength and fitness high on the totem pole of priorities.

Make sure you are part of the new tide of change and become and stay very active not only for yourself but for the children of tomorrow.