Читать книгу The Juice Master: Turbo-charge Your Life in 14 Days - Jason Vale, Jason Vale - Страница 43

You must have heard them (you may even be one them) – people who say the reason they got overweight and unfit was because they sprained their foot, knackered their elbow, broke their leg or damaged their ligaments, and so the list goes on and on. However, in order to have an injury so severe that it stops you from doing any kind of exercise you would need to be in a Christopher Reeve situation. Actually, that’s not even true. One of the many things the truly remarkable Christopher Reeve did for the nine years of his life as a paraplegic was to make sure he exercised whenever he could. His exact words from his inspirational book Nothing Is Impossible are, ‘I’ve also found the self-discipline to exercise when I don’t feel like it…’ Remember these words if you’ve ever banged on about how you can’t exercise because of whatever.

If you have a leg injury, do some upper-body exercises. If you can’t move your arms, move your legs. If you can’t put pressure on your joints, go for a swim or jump on a trampoline. If you really can’t move anything without being in pain, do some deep-breathing exercises and cut down on your fuel consumption. After all, you wouldn’t put the same amount of fuel into your car if you weren’t using it as much as usual, would you?

There isn’t any reason on the planet why anyone should become unhealthy or overweight just because they have an injury. I’ve seen people in wheelchairs whacking tennis balls over nets and shooting basketballs into hoops, and I’ve seen people with no arms running marathons. In fact, I’ve seen people with no legs running marathons with prosthetic limbs.

Whatever the injury, it shouldn’t be an excuse for not achieving your health and body-shape goals. Look at someone like Tanni Gray Thompson, a truly remarkable and superb athlete. Losing the use of her legs didn’t stop her training and getting the rest of her body super-fit, so much so that she has, at the time of writing, won an incredible 11 gold medals for Great Britain at the Paralympics. What’s your excuse?

Then you have the, ‘But I used to…’ gang. You know, the people who tell you how much sport they used to play; how they used to run all the time and how they used to always be in the gym. But so what? Used to means Jack! You can spend your life living in the ‘what I used to be able to do’ world, but that’s not going to change how you look and feel today.

The truth is most people can usually exercise with an injury, no matter what the situation. There is always a way if the person is committed. Instead of looking at what isn’t possible because of the injury, people should focus on what can be done.