If you are over the age of 40, then you know that there are many changes that have taken place in society, in our local communities, in our lives in general. One very big change is in the way we view physical fitness. From the time when we were kids to today, our fitness challenges have also changed, and there are reasons for the struggle to understand them.

For my generation (the baby boomers) and even before us, children grew up doing only three things, going to school, doing chores around the house, and playing outside. The term playing was always accompanied by the word ‘outside’, because we were never allowed to do so inside the house.

That was a good thing, because it afforded us kids a chance at fresh air, much more strenuous activity, and many more friends than we could have gained in our house back then. To our folks it was a good thing, too, because we were out of their way, not messing up the house, and not disturbing their peace and quiet.

Now, we played, and played, and played until it was time to go home. We ran, jumped, climbed, threw, scooted, skipped, pedaled, bent over, lifted, twisted, hung upside down, gripped, grabbed, hit, pulled, pushed, you name it, we did it in the name of play and fun.

All of this motion and movement provided us with exercise by coincidence, because we involved ourselves in activities which necessitated those movements. We didn’t do them because we knew they were good for us in order to maintain our health, and we didn’t learn about the healthful benefits of all that activity.

So, is it any wonder that we baby boomers can’t fathom not being in shape? After all, it just happened naturally, didn’t it? We didn’t do anything special while growing up, except maybe attend gym class, and that was mainly “free time” to do some of the very same things we did on our own outside of school anyway. Yet, we didn’t have to worry about our body declining or falling apart.

However, in our mature years, we do have to worry about that, because we don’t engage in all of the things we did as children. Now, we need to re-create those same kind of movements on our own on a regular basis, in order to have similar benefits to our muscular, skeletal and all of our other internal systems that we used to get by coincidence. In other words, we really need to engage in workouts for purpose.

A personal trainer can certainly help you do that.