Every morning at 6:30am I walk into the gym ready to go. I'm fired up to help my people start moving in positive ways. The first thing I always notice when I walk in is 5-10 committed individuals on the cross trainer (sometimes refers to as the elliptical). Now I really admire these guys when I say committed. They get there before me so they must be up pretty early. They tend to be on exercising for 30 to 60 minutes or so and it's fair to say they're putting in a decent effort, which I applaud. But, I can't help wondering if their time could be spent moving in other ways? Why is this? Well let's look into it...

The importance of cardiovascular fitness is well known and well documented. If I ask any of those people on the cross trainer their reasons for using it, 9 times out of 10 the answer is 'cardio'. I get it, you get your heart rate up, you get your lungs working hard and you're decreasing your risk of cardiovascular disease right? Well, sort of...Everyone talks about doing cardio but we often forget the 'vascular' part of that term. And this is where it gets interesting!

The role of the heart and the lungs is to pump blood to the working tissues around the body. You have this amazing arterial and vascular network throughout your body that thrives for oxygen and the way it gets it is through movement. However, when you are on the cross trainer because the movement is controlled for you (there is little input from the brain and the nervous system to drive the movement) it is repetitive and quite restricted because it only uses a small amount of muscle/tissue to drive that movement. So, blood and oxygen is only getting to those tissues and not much else.

If you truly want to do cardiovascular exercise because of the importance to your health and well-being we need to start looking at a broader movement approach. We need to get blood and oxygen into all the tissues of the body. All the way from the heart into the fingers and toes! How do we do this you might be thinking? Easy, start moving the way your body has evolved to move. Start walking, running, squatting, rolling, crawling, climbing, swinging, pushing and pulling. Start exploring your body's true potential for movement.

I realise that when you haven't been moving for a while it can be hard to get started. So I want to make that process simple enough that it gives you the confidence to get started. I’ll be writing about all things movement, health and fitness related. Watch this space…

Matt McCorkindale has worked as a personal trainer in London and Sydney. Now he’s back in Wellington and ready for his next challenge... to help his fellow Wellingtonians improve and change their lifestyle choices through the Ministry of Movement.