The Hindu Business Line : Exercise caution

One can empathise with G.R. Khairnar, Mumbai's former fiery deputy municipal commissioner. When you are passionate about life (consider his gruelling 16-hour work schedule), deeply committed (he spent virtually all his life-savings on social work), and discover that yoga eases your joint aches, allergies et al, true to your intense temperament, you blaze into its practice with all the force of your strength, sinew and spirit. It's no myth. Even the humble walk opens out 96,000 km of body-capillaries to irrigate and nourish the muscles. Plus, 20 per cent of the heart's blood flow and oxygen goes to the brain, boosting its biochemistry. The effect: Awesomely euphoric. So much so, that a self-motivated exerciser can turn into a self-driven addict wrongly believing: `more is better'.

That's how Khairnar hurtled into 12-hour yoga sessions, became disoriented, reeled with weakness and found himself in hospital, feeling fragile as a flower. As Paramahansa Yogananda points out in Autobiography of a Yogi, "The body of the average person is like a 50-watt lamp which cannot accommodate the billion watts of power roused by excessive practice of yoga." It's so with all exercise disciplines. Don't let this put you off exercise, however.

Fitness, like fortune, too favours the bold and bright-eyed. Guts and glory need the gentling wisdom of a guru, though. As Robin Sarma writes in The Monk who sold his Ferrari, "Nothing to extremes, everything in moderation." The beginner's body must walk, not race. The master's body must sometimes rest, not run. Like evolution, you can't hurry fitness. If, like Khairnar, you are the kind who pushes yourself beyond limits, tack these two fitness fundas on your board:

Excess is not success: Harness your strength of purpose to a sense of proportion.

All effort is not efficient: Control your energy; don't let your energy control you.

I learnt these from hard knocks. Buoyed by my inexhaustible reserves of energy, I swam 75 minutes non-stop. And painfully woke up next morning, body stiff, mind numb, temper short, my blood pressure and spirit at an all-time low. My doctor grounded me for a fortnight with doses of mineral salts and water. The truth is: too much, too often, too soon strains sinews, stamina, health, and temper.

When you over-exercise, the body goes into a catabolic state where the adrenal hormones occupy inappropriate sites. The resulting false euphoria makes you go into an overdrive... False, because your physiology is neither conditioned nor fit to attempt the gruelling regime of gurus and champions. It takes 10-20 years of regular practice to move from beginner to intermediate to the guru-champ level.

In Why Exercise, David Ashton and Bruce Davies offer a balanced perspective. "There is an element of addiction to exercise. This is no bad thing. Indeed, we expect individuals to become addicted to some degree, which spurs them to continue with and benefit from their exercise. But, it should not become paramount to an absurd degree with friends, marriage, children and occupation all assuming secondary importance. Such exercisers must not allow it to become an obsession to the point where it becomes unhealthy. They must accept the addictive quality of exercise and make sure it does not result in hardship and stress for those around them."

To stop yourself from getting into an overdrive, do what you'd do if you were ascending a thousand stairs. Pause every now and then. Catch your mind as you'd catch your breath. Re-evaluate your original expectations and goals — have you attained them? If so, are you maintaining them? Speak to your teacher. Don't disregard experienced advice because you feel you've gone beyond being taught. Relax, discern... Are you mistaking obsession for discipline?

Generally, adhering to your exercise routine is laudable, but being inflexible imprisons your free will, narrows your perception. Discipline is a firm string that flies your kite, obsession a heavy chain that grounds it.

Take an overview: Are you postponing several professional projects, refusing to rest? Are you sleeping or slumbering? Resolve to treat exercise as a prism to enhance your life, not a prison that straitjackets it.

Further, don't starve your body of nutrients. A starving body leeches protein from muscles to cause weakness, strips calcium from bones to cause osteoporosis, its digestive acids burn the stomach lining into gastrointestinal ulcers. And the glucose-starved brain becomes disoriented. Eat low-fat complex carbos (rice, bananas); fibre and minerals (fruits); vitamins (vegetables); proteins (pulses); calcium (curd).

A wholesome diet combined with moderate exercise — as a study conducted on 31 volunteers by the department of natural science, San Diego State University, showed — enhances self-control, tolerance, intellectual efficiency, verbal fluency, quick thinking, and perceptiveness. Ponder on this: On small bricks of self-improvement are built big edifices of well-being.

The writer is co-author of the book `Fitness for Life'.

Picture by Shaju John

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