WHAT IS HEALTH..?
Many health consultants these days describe health and well being in 3 simple ways:
1. Regular exercise
2. Healthy diet
3. Pranayaam or Yoga for mind health.
But very few describe what really health and exercise is.
Heath according to me is “The ability to enjoy each and every moment of life..WITHOUT ANY REASON.”When simply living in ‘here and now’ (living in present) is happiness for you then you are in a perfect state of well being.As an athlete to perform on a bigger stage, you must have elite health and fitness; only then your performance blossoms.
For e.g. Just imagine you are training to run a half marathon but your chronic problem of constipation troubles you on the day of the run Or your knee problem aggravates on that day. Many athletes are living in a very worst healthy body and that is one of the main reasons for under performance.
-
Health
⬇
Fitness
⬇
Performance
A perfectly healthy and fit person can perform well.
In this series of HEALTH AWARENESS I will be writing about
1. Health (physical, mental , spiritual, social)
2. Fitness (strength, flexibility, speed, endurance)
3. Nonspecific training i.e. Methods other than game specific training. For e.g. breathing techniques to overcome performance fear or balancing exercises for better mind control etc.
Modern day human working style is less use of body and tremendous use of brain which affects the physical and mental health. Human body is designed to work or move but our lifestyle is exactly opposite to it and that’s why we call walking as an exercise. It’s not an exercise for human body it’s just an activity. But to start, with walking is okay.
Excessive focus on mind training (Yoga and Pranayama) these days for athletes or even general public is not going to help to perform well on sports field or your office, work place.
A healthy body and mind together will give you good results. Honestly speaking you cannot say body and mind separately. Actually they are one and the same thing but the only difference is one is visible and the other is not but still they both need different training. They work together. Any small physical ailment (pain, injury etc) is going to affect your mental state and vice versa. So any person with healthy body and mind is the basic need of any sports.
Our health is in our own hands. All we need to do is becoming more and more aware of our body, body signals (pain, hunger, thirst, bowel habits, sleep etc).
According to Indian mythology we all are born in some specific ‘Dharma’ (social customs regarded as religion or it is the right way of living) but all athletes should have only one Dharma which is ‘Sharir Dharma’ i.e. looking after your body in the most specific way, live a very disciplined life.
Next article: What is a Healthy Lifestyle?
Dr Sudhanshu Takawale
BAMS, Fellow in sports sciences.
Consultant in Exercise therapy for spine, joints and sports injuries
