The main purpose of sport is to increase the performance of your body.
The first people who exercised regularly were soldier's, you see when your performance on the battlefield could cost you your life. You want to do everything possible to be prepared for that task and reduce the risk of dying.
This is why physical exercised remained a part of military training since the ancient times of the Spartans and ancient Greece to today.
Another purpose of sport is entertainment, even since the first Olympic games human have been participating or enjoying sportive competitions.
One of the purpose of the Olympic games, was for countries to compete with each others without killing each other.
It was George Orwell who said that sport is war without weapons.
The first athletes where soldiers in the beginnings there were no professional athletes.
Because the athletes were popular with the public, this inspired a lot of people to copy the behaviours of the athletes.
After all athletes are celebrated heroes, they enjoy a certain degree of fame and prosperity.
So people want to be like them to enjoy some of the benefits of being a successful athlete. This unfortunately created some misconceptions about physical exercise:
- The first misconception is that sport it is an effective way to lose weight.
It is not only the performance that people want, but also the esthetics of an athlete.
Is it true that physical exercise can chance the way your body looks, make your muscles bigger for example.
But it is a ridiculously ineffective way to losing weight.
Whenever you move your body burns glucose not fat, it is only after you run out of glucose that you start to burn some fat.
So at best an hour of vigorous high intensity exercise is going to burn a few tens of grams of fat.
This is why diet is key, if you do everything right when it comes to exercise but eat the worst diet. You are going to still be fat there is no amount of exercise you can do to cancel a terrible diet.
On the other hand if you are a couch potato but your diet is very good, you are going to be skinny.
Exercise is going to make a small insignificant contribution.
- The second misconception is that sport is healthy.
It is impossible to exercise without injuring yourself. I don't know anybody that works out and hasn't suffered at least some minor injuries.
You are simply using your body in a way that it wasn't designed to function and that is going to cause it to break down.
From sprained joints, tendonitis, ligament tears, conclusion or sore muscles.
Their is also some evidence that indicates that the stress of the exercise on the body, will cause it to age prematurely and shorten your life expectancy.
You are defiantly not going to look or perform like an athlete, if you don't work out.
But if your goal is general health and longevity, working out is going to hurt those goals!