Bri­an Chin Le­ung

?Be­fore choos­ing a fit­ness ac­tiv­i­ty, you must ask your­self the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

Do I pre­fer group ac­tiv­i­ties or do I pre­fer my own com­pa­ny? Do I like in­door or out­door ac­tiv­i­ties? Do I pre­fer low-risk fit­ness ac­tiv­i­ties–eg aer­o­bics, walk­ing, ten­nis etc–or high-risk fit­ness ac­tiv­i­ties like box­ing, mar­tial arts, kayak­ing, rock climb­ing, etc? Do I want my train­ing to be func­tion­al and health-ori­ent­ed, or pure­ly cos­met­ic?

Al­ter­na­tive fit­ness

Al­ter­na­tive fit­ness has tak­en off big time on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. Ba­si­cal­ly, al­ter­na­tive fit­ness is for peo­ple who hate go­ing to con­ven­tion­al gyms equipped with the usu­al re­sis­tance ma­chines, tread­mills, spin bikes, etc. In­stead, al­ter­na­tive fit­ness is based on a lot of func­tion­al ex­er­cis­es that in­clude flip­ping trac­tor tyres, climb­ing mon­key bars, rope climb­ing, sledge ham­mer train­ing, ply­o­met­ric jump­ing, ket­tle bells etc. It is nev­er bor­ing and every time you en­gage in a ses­sion of al­ter­na­tive fit­ness, you chal­lenge your­self phys­i­cal­ly in a most in­tense man­ner. There are many re­wards which in­clude in­creased ex­plo­sive pow­er, speed, agili­ty, bal­ance and in­creased re­ac­tion time. If there is any down­side to al­ter­na­tive fit­ness, it is the fact that it should not be per­formed more than twice per week, as it takes a tremen­dous toll on your joints, ten­dons and lig­a­ments.

If you are not in­ter­est­ed in that sort of in­tense train­ing and you are more con­cerned with im­prov­ing your phys­i­cal shape, then you may con­sid­er util­is­ing a com­bi­na­tion of the fol­low­ing ex­er­cis­es, some of which are very ef­fec­tive for burn­ing body fat and mus­cle ton­ing: Tae-bo, spin­ning, jog­ging, bik­ing–All of these dis­ci­plines im­prove your car­dio­vas­cu­lar health tremen­dous­ly, while help­ing you to burn body fat. Karate, Krav Ma­ga, Ju­do, Jiu Jit­su etc–Mar­tial arts ac­tiv­i­ties im­prove your flex­i­bil­i­ty, bal­ance, agili­ty, anaer­o­bic fit­ness lev­el of fit­ness and al­so show you how to kick butt ef­fec­tive­ly. Re­sis­tance train­ing–This re­lates di­rect­ly to any form of weight train­ing, whether it is ma­chines or free-weight train­ing. If you are look­ing to im­prove un­de­vel­oped body parts fast and change your phys­i­cal shape, then you have got to weight train.

In ad­di­tion to im­prov­ing your phys­i­cal shape, weight train­ing is great for strength­en­ing your joints, lig­a­ments, ten­dons and in­creas­ing your ba­sic me­tab­o­lism. Ball games–Most ball games are high­ly mo­ti­vat­ing and ex­treme­ly com­pet­i­tive. They in­clude ten­nis, squash, hock­ey, soc­cer etc. If you like part­ner or group ac­tiv­i­ties, this is the way to go. Most ball games al­so in­volve ex­plo­sive re­ac­tion time and a high lev­el of anaer­o­bic fit­ness. Whether your goal is to im­prove your shape or in­crease your lev­el of health and fit­ness, it is not go­ing to hap­pen un­til you are able to com­mit your­self reg­u­lar­ly to any of the above dis­ci­plines. So many peo­ple are arm­chair ex­perts and know every­thing about all games or phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties ever in­vent­ed by man; yet they are nev­er seen en­gag­ing in any of these ac­tiv­i­ties. Don't watch your body go to waste, com­mit your­self now!

Keep Train­ing.