If you’ve been to fitness and found that everything looks complex or you don’t know what to start with, try pilates today. It’s simple and gives quick results.
A recent report from the Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit focused on research in preventative health and wellness, found that Americans spent $264.6 billion dollars on physical activity in 2018, far more than any other nation. The United States leads the world in spending for every segment, including fitness classes ($37 billion), sports and recreation ($58 billion), apparel and footwear ($117 billion), equipment and supplies ($37.5 billion), mindful movement, such as yoga ($10 billion), and related technology ($8.1 billion).
And yet. And yet…
How people spend on fitness & excercise
According to the academic journal The Lancet, for all of this spending, we rank 143rd globally for actual participation in physical activity. More than 40% of Americans fail to meet the global standard of 150 minutes per week of moderate physical activity (for example, fast-paced walking or gardening) or 75 minutes per week of intense physical activity (for example, running or strength training).
This data largely mirrors what we know about health care. The U.S. spends, by far, the most money of any developed nation on health care per person but ranks toward the bottom (if not last) on common measures of actual health, such as chronic disease, life expectancy, infant mortality, disability, and drug-related deaths. This is not surprising, given that insufficient physical activity, along with poor diet, is the second leading cause of preventable death, only behind smoking.
Why fitness is popular?
The Global Wellness Institute listed a few causes for the discrepancy between dollars spent on physical activity in our country and actual participation: we don’t have enough sidewalks or bike lanes, youth sports have become too expensive and hypercompetitive, we lack a supportive and communal exercise culture.
In addition, the health and fitness industry has become obsessed with complexity. Sometimes this is warranted, but often it’s not. One reason people make things complex is so they can sell them. It’s hard to monetize the basics, but come up with an intricate and sexy-sounding approach to something and people will pay for it.
Fitness is too complex?
So why are so many of us willing to fork over cash for often unnecessary services? Perhaps because complexity is a way to avoid facing the reality that what really matters for health and fitness is simply showing up and doing the work. Not thinking about it or talking about it. Just doing it.
The more complex you make something, the easier it is to get excited about, talk about, and maybe even get started — but the harder it is to stick with over the long haul. Complexity gives you excuses and ways out and endless options for switching things up all the time.
Try Pilates for Results
Simplicity is different. You can’t hide behind simplicity. You have to show up, day in and day out, and pound the stone. Simplicity with quick visible results is why Pilates is growing so rapidly in popularity.
It’s time to go back to basics. For nutrition, the writer Michael Pollan famously offered this advice: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” For fitness, I’d like to add: move your body often, sometimes hard, every bit counts. Learn Pilates and keep fit, lean and flexible while improving your self-confidence.
Even if you insist that you’re too busy to exercise because you work some kind of important job, you ought to consider reframing exercise as an essential part of that important job. Try Pilates today. Research shows that regular exercise increases creative thinking and problem-solving, improves mood and emotional control, and enhances focus and energy. There is no line of work that doesn’t benefit from those attributes.
Try Pilates today. Let us know if you have any questions about our Pilates classes. Join our class or call Joyce at 214-616-7989. Follow us on Instagram.
