Many people exercise, but few people train, especially seniors. Exercise becomes training when a progressive element is included in the program. There is an adage: if you are not trying to move forward, then you are moving backwards. The natural progression of life makes us weaker. The best way to avoid weakness is to become stronger. The program advanced in this book is exercise training to make us stronger. Progressive training presents challenges, but there are ways to overcome these challenges.
It is hardly a secret that exercise is good for us, but what kind of exercise do we really need? We exercise to increase our physical fitness, and by physical fitness, we mean our capacity to work and to play. Looking at the twelve components of fitness, most exercise programs are devoted to increasing some form of strength. The three forms of strength are power, stamina and endurance.
Before we continue much further, we need to take a brief look at some physical fitness terminology. The word “exercise” can have two different meanings depending on whether it is being used as a verb or a noun. When we run, we exercise and the name of that exercise is running. Exercise as a verb is some activity that develops physical fitness. The noun “exercise” refers to some specific activity for a physical fitness purpose. It is also a generic term for general physical activity, which is also close to its definition as a verb, “We all know we need to exercise.”
If we begin exercising to become more physically fit, then we are training. We design a program of exercises for our training. Then, we do a series of workouts using these exercises. Hopefully, our training program will realize our goal of becoming more physically fit. Training requires a progressive intensity of exercise. So if we walk an hour every day, we are exercising, but we are not training because there are no goals and no progressive exercise. Now if we strive to walk further or faster each time, then the walk is both training and exercise.
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