alan little’s weblog

yoga and fitness

18th October 2005 permanent link

The place where I’m working has a pretty good employee fitness programme (also open to contractors), including a gym where I do my yoga practice at lunchtime – easier than doing it at home with a toddler jumping on me. This week they’re doing various fitness assessment specials to encourage people to sign up, one of which was body fat measurements outside the canteen at lunchtime.

I have 13.3% body fat, which is fairly low for a man of my age. But my Body Mass Index (weight over height squared) is 25, which is quite high. Lowish fat and highish BMI apparently means I’m quite muscular. Which is interesting. Yoga is the only exercise I do on a regular basis these days. I gave up rock climbing ten years ago; up until four years ago I was doing a fair bit of mountain biking and snowboarding, but those too came to an end when I became first an expectant and then an actual father. I sometimes ride my bike to work, which is a 20 mile round trip – but only a couple of days a week at most in summer and not at all in winter, and this summer was so lousy I hardly did it at all. So really just yoga – forty minutes to an hour and a half, four to six times a week.

Practicing yoga for the sake of one’s health, a firm body, or enjoyment is not the right approach.

But if doing it means you get a healthy, firm body as side effect, then that means you don’t have to spend time and energy on other activities aimed at maintaining fitness, so you have more time for yoga …

related entries: Yoga

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