by Gary Brown, Physiotherapist & Director of Coaching at Origin Fitness
Movement is medicine. Physiology aside, if you were to voluntarily get moving, it’s incredible to see how your body and mind respond. The benefits are endless. Research for years has told us the positive benefits of exercise for our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.
What is also so remarkable, is how exercise can bring people together. Just observe, it’s everywhere around us. Pods of people cycling, running on roads and in parks, walking the strands and piers, playing sports. If you observe closely, you will notice the body language of the people around each other; the positivity, the energy…..the happiness.
We are all unique individuals. A team of people is a collection of unique individuals. Therefore health and fitness levels will be equally unique to the individual. The healthier and fitter an individual is, the more energy they will provide to their working environment, and the less likely they are to take time away from work due acute or chronic illness, be that physical, mental or emotional illness.
The team as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We should all be keenly aware of whether or not we doing everything we can to help the members of our team? Are we supporting each other so that we, as a team, perform better and better, so that we can achieve great things together? Isn’t that what a team is all about? In business, in sport, in life?
The science on this is pure fact. Increased weight and obesity levels lead to acute and long term physical, mental and emotional illness. These include higher levels of diabetes, spinal pain, greater risk of depression, anxiety, decreased motivation, mood swings, arthritis, higher risk of cancer, high risk of heart disease and generally lower productivity and work capacity.
What is truly amazing about the severity of the above conditions is how easily many of them can be prevented through correct exercise, nutrition and lifestyle behaviours.
Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Exercise, nutrition and lifestyle are all habits. They are not high performance skills, but daily habits, just like brushing your teeth and washing your hands. In order for us to establish and practice better habits we must create an environment around us that supports these habits. Just like at home with our families and friends, our environment will shape how we live our lives. If we all begin to consciously make small, positive changes to our environment at work and decide, as a team or as a group of disparate individuals, to wholeheartedly make the effort necessary to implement these changes, then we as individuals become healthier and fitter. Our team becomes healthier and fitter. We are giving ourselves every opportunity to achieve great things together.
The first step is the hardest and the most important, but the first step leads to the next…..the journey begins. Making that first step is all the easier when undertaken with a team – together is half the battle! So, get your team ‘moving’ today!
