Using fitness?

Hi everyone,

The other day, Anita at Running against the Odds put up a very thought-provoking post about using running as a way to channel anger.  This post resonated with me.  I’ve often used exercise to burn off unwelcome (or at any rate, unhealthy) emotions over the years  The punching bag in the shearing shed will bear me out.  

I can’t say I’ve often used running to burn off rage, exactly.  Guilt and fatigue and weakness, certainly, but not rage.  I've also found it's a good way of getting rid of the oddly discomfiting feeling of not knowing if you’re happy or not about the passage of the years (regular readers will know this is a sore point for me).  In my mind, at least, being young and fit are more-or-less interchangeable concepts.

Anyway, this got me thinking: what else do we use healthy living for?  My friend Madi, for instance, values a healthy life for its own sake -

I like being connected to the land, I love camping, specifically the smell of campfires and the sound of cockatoos and other native birds in the morning when you wake up and I love LOVE the smell of fresh air.

As well as emotional control, I tend to use fitness to break up my day.  Among other things, I walk home most evenings from the office.  The hour or so of movement with a podcast playing clears my head and splits off "home" and "work" in a way that sitting on a tram staring at my phone just doesn't.  It also means I get to see some rather cool bits of Melbourne

So my question to you is: what do you use fitness for besides the obvious benefits of cardiovascular wellbeing and strength?