Learn How to Jog with These Simple Jogging Tips

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You will need to return, again and again, to the reminder that real accomplishment cannot be gained overnight. It is won over weeks, months and years of regular jogging effort. Your task is not to complete the job of being a jogger, but to begin. Good education and correct practice now can do a great deal to help you find what you're looking for.

So begin by putting aside your watch, climbing into some comfortable shoes and loose clothing, and taking a number of regular walks over the next few days. Remember, even too much walking can be overly strenuous for some people, so begin by going out 15 to 60 minutes every other day. As you begin to train and accommodate to this new stress (perhaps far more regular exercise than you've had for years), you'll slowly begin to understand the basic instructions: Take it easy, have fun doing what you're doing, and don't hurt yourself.

What is Fitness?

There is cosmetic fitness. The fitness of looking good in the mirror, liking what you see when you take off your clothes. This is important, since liking what you see helps you feel good. And feeling good is one of the very practical effects of being in good shape.

A second part of fitness is flexibility. Flexibility is associated with youth; stiffness and immobility with old age. The ability to maintain a full range of motion into old age is important because it allows a freedom of movement associated with resiliency, self-reliance, independence, beauty and grace.

A third part of fitness is balance, which leads to coordination. Balance is being able to revolve your motion around your center of gravity so that gravity doesn't work against you. It's knowing how to carry yourself with equilibrium and how to move with stability.

Still another part of fitness is strength: the ability to maintain the muscle quality necessary to perform daily tasks with something left over for the unexpected.

A fifth component is speed. Not the speed of an Olympic gymnast, but the speed that allows for a consistent and personally acceptable pace throughout life, rather than the crippling slowness and poor coordination accepted as an unavoidable by-product of a passing youth.

The last part of fitness is endurance, especially cardiovascular endurance: the ability of the heart and circulatory system to carry out their functions well and long without fatigue and disease. The ability of the body to supply muscles and organs with the blood needed for efficient, pain free, expressive movement.

Jogging is a particularly good sport with which to achieve a "base-level" of fitness because it can be readily engaged in by most people and because it uses the largest muscles in the body — the leg muscles — which demand a strong heart to pump the blood necessary for their proper functioning. (There, of course, are other sports which are just as good as or better than jogging. Cross-country skiing and competitive rowing are two which require more of the heart, yet they are not as available as jogging to most people.) This demand on the heart is stress, and stress applied advisedly to any muscle will cause it to train and become stronger, more able to perform work.

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