Athlete's Way Sweat and the Biology of Bliss

Chapter One My Story I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew so well. Henry David Thoreau I have spent the past two decades exploring my own motivation and what motivates other people, and I am excited to share everything I have learned here. This book offers hundreds of reasons that will inspire you to exercise. Sport turned my life around and continues to inform my lifeI know the power exercise has to improve daily life and to change your life. That is why I am a zealot about this program. By pushing against my limits every day for more than twenty years, I have been able to isolate the components that go into maximizing the potential of brain, mind, body, and spirit. I have probably logged more miles on a treadmill than just about any other person on the planet. I run about thirty to fifty miles a week, indoors and outside, and have done so for more than two decades. I also bike, swim, lift weights, and stretch religiously. I know the inside of the athletic process very well. Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! Lewis Carroll There is one important caveat. When it comes to exercise, more is not necessarily better. I do adventure and ultra-racing because I love it, not because it's good for me. I know I'm a freak. I would never encourage anyone to become an ultra-athlete unless it was his life's passion. There are tonic levels of fitness that can fit into your schedule easily and give all the benefits of exercise. The Athlete'S Way Prescriptive for a tonic level of fitness Twenty to forty-five minutes of cardio most days Full-body strength training two to three times a week (twenty to forty minutes) Stretch-balance three to five times a week (ten to fifteen minutes) Sleep for seven to eight hours a night This adds up to a minimum weekly time commitment of three hours of exercise. There are 168 hours in a week. Just three hours of exercise per week will radically change the other 165 hours of your life. Think about it. That's about 2 percent of your week to feel better the other 98 percent of the time. It's an unbeatable ratio. With just three cumulative hours of exercise a week you feel better, look better, and sleep better. The return on investment is astronomical. Our biological design was generous; relatively little exercise reaps an exponentially huge payback. Sweat and the Biology of Bliss Like a Sunny Day in June No one has ever drowned in sweat. Lou Holtz I came up with the title The Athlete's Way: Sweat and the Biology of Bliss on a summer afternoon as I was biking in Central Park. If you spend a lot of time in Central Park, you get to recognize the regulars. You see the same faces every day. This June day felt like the first day of summereveryone was exuding so much energy and a love of life . . . walking, biking, running, in-line skating, skateboarding, horseback riding. I felt that I was with old friends, even though we were technically strangers. The enthusiasm was contagious, and we were all feeding off one another's happiness. In looking for the X-factor that connected us, I realized that how fast or slow people were going, or if they were partBergland, Christopher is the author of 'Athlete's Way Sweat and the Biology of Bliss', published 2007 under ISBN 9780312355869 and ISBN 0312355866.