Participating in a charitable event always makes your heart feel good, but when the charitable event is fitness related it could be beneficial to your heart in more ways than one. Charitable fitness events can be as simple as walking or as involved as a triathlon.
Many of us want to commit to a fitness routine and have goals we wish to achieve, but for the majority we often fall behind and eventually give up. When you make the decision to participate in a charitable fitness event, it helps achieve the following:
+ It makes exercise a commitment
+ It makes exercise easier
+ It makes exercise feel less selfish
+ It makes exercise a reunion
When you commit to an event, such as The Relay For Life, exercise is no longer just about you. This helps takes that focus and pressure off of what your personal goals are and help you to focus on what your exercise habits will be achieving in the long run. Knowing in January that you need to get ready for the big race in June, helps to keep you on task with an exercise schedule in mind. Making your fitness schedule about the people benefiting from this charitable event will contribute to making you feel good about that very time consuming and exhaustive workout, making it feel like much less of a chore and more of a good deed. If it is an event you have participated in the past, then there is also that sense of community and meeting up with other participants that you have met at previous years events.
In the process of all of this training and working out, you become more physically fit and able to meet your weight loss goals. Keeping to your fitness routine for the event helps you to develop healthy habits, whether it be regarding food or exercise or both. Even if you only train 3 months before the event, chances are that you will continue to keep in shape out of habit once the event has taken place.
Choosing the event that is right for you is pretty basic and all depends on how much working out you are ready to commit to. There are many charities that hold events each year, some with a walk/run combination and others that are more involved. Beyond the type of fitness event you chose to participate in, it is also important to choose a charity that represents something in your life. For example if you or someone in your life has been affected by Leukemia or Lymphoma, there is Light The Night, a nighttime walk to raise awareness and money for blood cancers. Or maybe your life has been affected in one way or another by AIDS, there is the AIDS Walk. A good place to start to find the right charity for you is to use the website Charity Navigator, which helps break down charities by category and gives you more information and background about them.
Have you been involved in fitness for charity? Tell us about your experience.
