On wellness
“Wellness” is a relatively new word in industry of health, beauty, and fitness. According to historians, the term “wellness” was used for the first time in English language in year 1654, but nothing is known about its meaning at those times, furthermore, the term was not used widely. In modern times the concept and philosophy of “wellness” was elaborated by American doctor Helbert Dan. In the wellness system developed by him the word “wellness” is understood not only as “healthy, free from illness”, but also as full harmony of body, spirit and mind in the broad sense. A little later other authors, such as Ardel, Travis, Benson-Stewart and others, began using the word “wellness” in their publications on health. The word “wellness” in English language is understood as “optimal well being”. People understand this word differently: for some it means rest, calmness, other people associate it with expensive SPA resorts, yet the other perhaps understand it as “workouts for lazy people”, but some better-informed people see it as rehabilitation technique that gently and intelligently, without harming our organism, can tune up anatomy- and physiology-related issues with human body. Certainly, there is some truth in all these descriptions.
There are two cases when health-promoting establishments are ascribed to those providing wellness services: according to the spectrum of services provided (here belong all SPAs, water procedures, and the like) or according to the concept of activity, i.e., the attitudes maintained in daily work of the establishment. It means that rehabilitation establishment or other establishment promoting health (let’s say, sanatorium or sports club), even if not providing water procedures, can fall into the category of wellness. Take, for example, our wellness club “Active Gym”. We do not provide SPA procedures, but could be attributed to the category of wellness, because in our daily work we follow the attitude of promoting health of people: propagation of healthy lifestyle, individual solutions of muscle balancing, workouts and nutrition programs, recommended rest regime, and overall a positive worldview.
Therefore wellness is an all-inclusive, comprehensive attitude towards human body as a single moving system, its physical, spiritual and psychological state. Besides wisely selected physical activeness that is determined in the first place by the current body potential, realistic wishes of the client, intellect and professional qualification of the trainer, in wellness additionally are used the most advanced achievements in massage, dietetics, endocrinology, gerontology and cosmetology. It is a complex solution of client’s health problems. In order to have a general picture of wellness, let us first review it in greater detail.
Wellness philosophy in brief
Movement. First of all, exercises must be selected properly and performed technically correctly. There must be no departures, otherwise the load aimed at a particular muscle is taken by “assistant” muscles. Furthermore, the load must be neither too heavy, nor too light, it simply must be optimal. It is a great means for prophylactics, for maintaining and improving the physical condition of organism and post-traumatic rehabilitation.
Relaxation. Relaxation and reduction or complete removal of stress experienced during the day is used by applying both passive (massages, water procedures such as whirlpool bath) and active means (yoga, pilates, thai-chi exercises). It is highly not recommended to exercise when being tired after work of the day, because physical activity is additional stress for the organism. Of course, in real life the individual person’s situation often cannot be changed, so adaptation to it is necessary by selecting lighter physical loads when exercising, but when possible the workout must be scheduled to take place in the morning before the work of the day begins.
Recovery. First of all, right nutrition habits, sensible nutrition programme taking into consideration the daily needs of the client allow strengthening and ensuring the effect of the above-mentioned procedures, improve the client’s well-being, change appearance. Surely, having a god sleep is also very important and this fact needs no further discussions. Over many years of practice it has been noticed that if a person exercises and eats correctly, his sleep problems get solved automatically. As it has been mentioned before, our club works in this direction. I am telling this not for the sake of advertising. This article is not an advertisement. It is for general information. A human being can solve many of his problems without using medications. We simply work in a bit different direction than other sports clubs of Vilnius city do. First of all we aim that a person’s attitude towards the workouts themselves would change. It must be acknowledged that many clients come to a sports club only to improve their appearance, without even thinking why they experience back pain or abnormally high blood pressure. Taking a detached view one may get a misleading impression: it seems that a person truly puts in efforts, taking exercises so that is even sweating, however, it is an often case that he does everything improperly thus complicating his problem even more. Maybe his back muscles are actually cricked already and they should be relaxed instead of giving them increasingly heavier load. The same applies to blood pressure: it is very probable that the person does not even know the maximum systole frequency appropriate for him during the workout and instead of strengthening the heart he aggravates it and when things with his health become really bad he self-confidently states: “I was exercising, but that did not help me, it only ruined my health”. But different result could not even be expected in such case! We often see such instances. Therefore if there is any (even the slightest) suspicion that a person may be ill with hypertension, a specialist right in the club examines heart function, during this examination the physical load permissible for that person during workout is identified. With all the means mentioned above it is aimed to improve a person’s health condition in a broad sense, and beautiful body after all those hours spent at the gym will occur for you inevitably and this for you will be like a present for sweating at workouts.
Wellness is a flexible totality of interrelated means of medicine, physical exercises, and psychology, aimed not only at prophylactics, but also at post-traumatic rehabilitation and improvement of a person’s health in the broad sense. The methodology of wellness workouts is based on anatomical-biomechanical principles of activity of human supportive-motional apparatus, making use of biomechanical and physiological features of human organism. The have a correcting influence both on people going in for sports and having no health problems and on clients ill with osteoporosis, ischemic heart disease, obesity, various joint diseases. This, certainly, allows a person to live a full life. After all, not many of us can boast of having no health problems. Lack of movement, inadequate nutrition, constant stress at work or in family, deficiency of sleep lead towards bigger or smaller health damage. There is no surprise that even those who try to care of themselves (constantly exercise on their own, try to eat healthily and have enough rest) have health problems. If a person is exercising it does not mean at all that he will automatically be healthy. Maybe he is exercising, like I mentioned, absolutely improperly, with load being too big or too small, and trains muscles other than those that should be trained in his case. For the sake of correctness let us add daily work when being slightly ill, for example, when experiencing cold or tender headache, feeling unexplainable irritability, etc. All these factors that seem insignificant at a first glance disturb internal and external human harmony called by one word: health. It is these problems that wellness workouts are aimed to solve. In principle, they are specialized, purposive workouts with trainer. Yes, it is more expensive, but effective and costs much less than becoming a regular patient of medical establishments.
Perhaps the most frequent problem that we encounter in our daily work and that leads to more serious consequences is imbalance of customers’ skeletal muscles. As a consequence of this imbalance, joints get contorted: pain becomes to be felt in bottom part of back, shoulder line, head, joints of hip or knee, changes in body posture appear: body asymmetry, pelvic inclination, spinal curvatures, etc. A person needlessly starts taking medications. Pharmacological treatment is also expensive and not always effective. And that is only fighting the consequences, while wellness workouts are aimed at removing the reasons of pain. Usually, once the balance of the musculature is restored and groups of interrelated muscles receive equal and consistent load, joint pain disappears as well. No matter how much you want it to be different, the modern rhythm of life brings in its corrections: permanent work when being bent at the computer monitor or automobile steering wheel, lack of suitable physical activeness with some muscles being too tensed all the time while other muscles are relaxed, do the “dirty” job. If attention is not paid to it, after some time pathologic changes in vertebra take place, the body becomes asymmetric. For example, if a person’s muscles of one side of the back are constantly too tensed, the spine is being rotated around its axis, one hip and automatically one shoulder become higher than the other and amateur approach to the problem does not help here. For this reason only a professional that is well-informed and skilled (for example, a doctor kinesitherapist) must assess the seriousness of the problem and prescribe appropriate exercises and, if necessary, give advice to trainer. In such case wellness workouts are simply mandatory for the person, because they integrate several methods of workouts, that positively and purposefully influence the organism. To make it clearer for everyone, let us briefly review these methods.
- functional method of workouts. Organism’s adaptation to the load is the sign of positive outcome of the workouts. For the organism to get used to the loads during workouts, the classes must be attended regularly two-four times a week. Certainly, everything depends on your physical condition that must be assessed by the doctor of the club and the trainer who follows his advice, they must also select appropriate loads. When exercising, gradual adaptation of organism takes place, the organism reacts to this adaptation by all its functional systems: from blood circulation to endocrine one.
- natural method. The basis of it consists of natural movements of the body, when all muscles of the body are working. When moving plastically and evenly (well, for example, during thai-chi exercises or at yoga classes), the body at many joints moves in different planes. In this way many muscles that are usually difficult to “reach” with sports machines are trained. For this reason, when muscle balance gets restored, for the client can be recommended not necessarily exercising with sports machines, but, say, attending cigun or yoga workouts.
- therapeutic method. When doing various exercises during workouts, our organism experiences some stress. In response to this all systems of human body start working in full power: blood composition changes, work of internal organs improves, absorption of oxygen increases, etc. In this way the wisely selected physical loads affect appropriate muscles, all functions of an organism are being improved.
- recovering-maintaining method. Intended for rehabilitation after various illnesses as well as for maintaining of vital tone. Its application is wider when working with people of middle and elderly age. After the classes the general improvement of health, better tone, amelioration of psychological state are observed and that apparently influence the overall quality of life.
What I am telling you here may be boring, but according to experts in statistics, eight out of ten people of the world sooner or later encounter joint and especially back pain occurring exactly because of imbalance of muscles. In many cases the pain can be avoided. The nature has constructed human body according to the principle of lever: if for some reason one or another muscle is constantly too tensed, most often its antagonist (opposite) muscle is too relaxed. This can be easily solved. You just have to know what to do.
Some may ask: what are the other advantages of wellness if everything is OK with health and you look as you feel ? First of all it tones the organism, that is, stimulates the moving reflexes of muscles, in result of which metabolism and blood circulation improve, the organism produces larger quantities of necessary hormones and ferments, all systems are stimulated, work of internal organs and general tone of skeletal muscles improve. The workouts amend oxidation-regenerative processes in the organism, especially in heart muscle. Tension in muscles experienced during the workouts affect the endings of radicles of nerves, as a consequence nerve impulse signals quicken and that positively influences the work of heart and internal organs. Wellness workouts restore the good condition of an organism. Without sufficient physical activeness, all body muscles go limp. They simply cease to perform their main functions (for example, no longer keep spine in correct position). Exercises, massage and other relaxing procedures strengthen muscles and the body “gets into a corset of muscles”. They protect: increased overall tone of muscles, improved flexibility of joints and action of the heart reduce the risk of physical traumas in everyday life and when going into other types of sport. They improve: when the balance of muscles is good, when joints are flexible, and when vestibular apparatus is trained, the coordination of movements improves and body posture gets better. And the beautiful appearance is surely pleasurable.
Wellness is not a short-term caprice: it should become an integral part of your life, or perhaps even style…
Trainer, nutrition consultant Žygimantas Lapėnas, „Active gym”, Vilnius.