Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)

Course Title
Enhancing Soft Skills And Personality

Lecture - 32
Managing Health -1: Importance of Exercise

by…
Prof. T. Ravichandran
Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences

Hello, hai! Welcome back to my course on Enhancing Soft Skills and Personality. So, we are on
the module related to health and we started with the first unit on the importance of health, as well

(Refer Slide Time: 00:24)

as the relationship between health and personality. In the next two units, that is unit 2 and unit 3
of week 7, will try to learn how to manage health and in this unit, in particular, let us look at the
importance of exercise. This is lesson number 32 and Managing Health-1: Importance of
Exercise.

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(Refer Slide Time: 00:53)

Before we actually go to the lesson, let us take a quick look of the highlights of the last lesson. In
the last lesson, we discussed about the significance of health and its impact on one’s personality.
We learnt that the health condition of a person determines the liveliness and enthusiasm of a
person. And when a person is ill, the body language of the person will not show confidence and
the face will not radiate with energy. Employers’ crucial decisions in appointing people depend
on various health factors. Besides, certain jobs demand fitness on the work front, which an unfit
person will not be able to cope with. Healthy individuals are considered to be disciplined, hard-
working, controlled, balanced, and are aware of what is good and bad for them. Moreover, they
are dependable and reliable unlike their ill-counterparts whom the employers cannot count on for
taking a lead role in important events.

So, I gave you examples such as, at the last moment a person in terms of ill health cannot be
relied upon because at the last moment something can come, some kind of disease, and the
person has to be admitted in a hospital, so the event manager finds at a major problem in running
that event. So, these are reasons why employers generally try to avoid people who do not have
sound health and they try to take clues from your body language, the way you perform yourself

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in the interview and all that, so companies are careful about choosing people with healthy habits
because unhealthy habits such as addiction to smoking cigarettes can cause them a fortune.
Employers are happy with able individuals who show reliability in carrying important documents
or valuables and use their physical strength to protect them from getting stolen. Overall, it was
clear that the time one gives for maintaining one’s health will pay rich dividends in the long run.

So that is what we learnt in the last lesson and in this lesson, we will try to know and understand
how we can manage health. And to start with, as I said we will try to understand the importance
of exercise and how you can make that as a routine and make it part and parcel of your life and
internalize exercise as such. If you look at health as such, some people have a wrong impression
that health is something to do with just body, but if you go to the actual definition given by an

(Refer Slide Time: 03:59)

international organization like the World Health Organization, WHO it defines health as “a state
of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or
infirmity.” So, the common misperception about health is that, it is something to do with the
body, only physical and the other thing is health means absence of disease or absence of some
kind of infirmity. Health is not only that or not just that. It is a state of complete physical, mental

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and social well-being. So physical: you have to of course do exercise; mental: you can regulate
interms of your mental stress by using yoga or meditation, social well-being automatically comes
when your emotional well-being is boosted up in terms of your physical and mental well-being.
In huge pursuit of mental activities, these days often people take for granted their health and fail
to manage their bodies. So timely upkeep of body is required for preventing it from untimely
malfunctioning.

So, the body is also like a machine and if you don’t take care of it regularly, and then if you push
it too much beyond the point, so suddenly it will start malfunctioning and you will not be able to
recover it so easily because you had actually exhausted it beyond a point. However, any amount
of stress can be withstood if the body is maintained in a healthy manner, so the body breaks
down, collapses due to excessive stress or due to excessive pressure exerted on it physically.

Usually it is sent in the form of stress. But any amount of stress can be bit stood if the body is
maintained in a healthy manner. If you maintain it in a healthy manner, so suddenly when the
stress comes, so you will be able to protect yourself from stress. Today, surprisingly even people
without any bad habits succumb to terminal diseases such as cancer for example, so you hear of
cases where suddenly people report to you with this alarming news that they were detected for
cancer.

And unfortunately, these are those people who are like teetotalers and they never had any bad
habits and they were eating only good vegetables and fruits, doing regular exercise and then what
went wrong? Now, it was found that mostly it is going to pollution which is affecting their lungs
and then other body parts and pesticides which are used in food products, preservatives which
are used in food products, so they are also responsible.

Now this only makes it imperative that we should take extreme care of our body because even
when you take care of it, you are helpless before an environment that is highly polluted and the
food that you take, there is no guarantee that it is free from pesticides which is likely to give you
any kind of terminal diseases, so when that is the case you need to build up your immunity, you

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need to develop strength and stamina so that is why it is important to manage your health by
regular exercise.
(Refer Slide Time: 08:03)

Now, look at the body, the body is the only place where the life-essence or the soul or whatever
form of life rests. So only in the body whatever you call as life can rest. Now, once the body gets
deceased, contaminated, polluted or affected by some disease and then slowly let us say the body
starts getting deteriorated and gets finally affected by any kind of disease so then the life-form
leaves the body, we call that as death, but that is the physical death of the body, the machine has
just stopped. And from malfunctioning it has just stopped functioning. So, to retain life energy in
the body and to make full use of it, one should keep the body fit by regular exercise.

What is exercise? Exercise is any activity that involves exerting your muscles in various ways to
keep yourself fit. Otherwise, muscle will reach a condition called muscle atrophy that is it
becomes very stable and fixed and it will lose its flexible nature. It will not have resilience and
then when it is losing its resilience and flexibility you will get muscle pull, you will get pain, you
will get spasms and so on. So it can be any form of physical activity like the basic walking,
slightly activated jogging or cycling, swimming, playing (any outdoor games), not the indoor,
card games or carom which consume very less energy and calories, but any outdoor games that

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you pursue actively so that comes under exercise but the most important point is that it has to be
consistent, so you cannot start something and leave it. So, if you do that consistently, so then it
will help you to maintain your health in a very good condition. If you can add exercise with
something else like yoga and meditation it will help you to safeguard yourself from stress that
attacks you at unprepared moments, because exercise is usually for the body although it gives
energy to the mind.

But combined with exercise, if you can add yoga and supplement that with meditation, so your
mind also remains calm and peaceful and it’s safeguarded from any attack from stress. So regular
exercise and add that with yoga and meditation and then the next question is that,

(Refer Slide Time: 11:17)

What time you have to do the exercise to make it beneficial? Now exercise, as such doing it any
time is beneficial, whether it is morning, afternoon, evening, night. So, when you exercise, it is
beneficial. In fact, you will hear about famous personalities who have develop their physique,
who have developed let us say a six pack body and all that, so they are known for exercising all
the time even while, let us say watching TV, so they may be having a kind of exercise that is
kept at home, some kind of equipment that can be used for cycling, okay or any active form is

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pursued instead of just literally lying on the couch. So, they don’t waste a single moment for
exerting themselves interms of exercise. So, on the one hand when I say that you can exercise
anytime because exercise itself is important but on the other hand, there are many studies,
research, and then factors, to prove that morning exercise is the most beneficial one or at least
more beneficial than other exercises.

So, as I said, although you can go for exercise as per a convenient time, you will gain optimum
benefit out of exercise if you are able to do it in the morning hours. So, some people will say that
oh it is very difficult because I have to leave as early as 7’o clock to my office. The point is, try
to get up slightly early than the time you get up normally and keep at least half an hour, 45
minutes for exercise and reduce the time that you go to bed, that is the time before you go to bed
so that will help you to balance your normal active time, instead of waking awake late at night
for one more hour, so you can sleep early and then add that time in the morning hours and use it
for exercise. So, you will be able to gain optimum benefit for one more reason, it is not just like
getting up and then energizing you in the morning when you go out and then rise along with the
rising Sun.

So, you get your supply of vitamin D from the Sun and then get energized from the morning
itself. So it is being told, especially people who are living in cold countries or people who are
spending most of the time in cold weather, even in India and if they are not exposed to sunlight
at all the time they are in dark spaces and then with dimly lit light and then when they go out it
is on car covered. So, they are never exposed to sun, so they can confront this problem of
vitamin D deficiency. So in order to avoid that, it suggested that at least 20 minutes you should
expose especially in the early morning hours so that you fill your quota of vitamin D, so that is
really good if you can even just walk around the nearby vicinity and then exposing yourself to
the Sun even for 20 to 30minutes, it is going to be very beneficial in the long run.

But having said this, so some of you may start and then again occasionally you may discontinue
exercise and then you prolong resuming that. So when you start it, resuming exercise is again
very important, okay, one may be compelled to discontinue exercise going to change in weather
conditions such as, sudden heavy rain, stormy weather, so it is not safe to go out and walk in the
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open air so you would like to be inside or some pressing commitments so you have to fill some
important painting activities, you have to finish it and then you have to stretch your working
hours so you are not able to get up early in the morning. So, you are not able to do, that is fine.
So, occasionally if it happens it’s okay, but you should not make that form as a bad habit and
then you just stop exercising at all. So, it is important that one resumes exercise at the earliest,
okay, the earlier the better. So, I will come to this point again, meanwhile, those who feel that it
is very difficult to start exercising at all.

(Refer Slide Time: 16:38)

So, I would like to give some tips for going for regular exercise. First, understand that the major
difficulty is in commencing any form of exercise. Either you need to decide overnight and then
just at that fit of the moment you have to decide tomorrow morning at 5:30 I will get up and I
will go to the ground, I may jog, I will do cycling, I will do yoga, whatever it is or I will play
some games, but then I will just go out and then start it. So that moment you decide, keep the
alarm and then get up and then go. So, that is one quick and efficient way of starting the exercise,
in some case you may not be decide that quickly, especially let us say if you are getting up at 9
O’ clock, 10 O’clock, so slowly then you have to advance your getting up time, so 9 O’clock has
to become 8 O’clock, 8:00 has to become 7: 30, then 7:00, then 6:30 , 6:00. So, for some people

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the gradual decrease in time, so that can help them to slowly manage any form of exercise.
However, you should understand that the difficulty is all in terms of starting. It is all said that,
it’s even till reaching the place where you want to exercise so it may be a ground, it maybe a
stadium, it may be a park, it may be a gym or it may be just going to the nearest river, lake or the
seashore or mountainous area, it’s just still reaching that spot, you need will and determination.

Once you reach, automatically the surrounding, the fresh air and then the birds chirping and then
the scenery that you see around that will motivate you to do something, so the trick is to just
make you get up and start and then reach that spot where you want to commence your exercise,
some of you have to push yourself up to that point, the rest will be taken care of automatically.
Now in case you find it very difficult to handle it at individual level, the next suggestion is to
join groups.

At least you have one friend, at least you have one colleague or even your business partner or
your spouse or your brother or sister with somebody and or a group you maintain and then you
decide that you will go to the gym or go for working at this particular time and then you call each
other, meet at a point, so one day even if you miss or you feel like missing the peer group
pressure will work on you so the other friend will say no, no come, let us instead of walking for
45 minutes let us walk for 30 minutes.

So, you will be feeling somewhat embarrassed to say no and that will put pressure on you to
maintain consistency. So joining groups is good for motivating you in case you don’t have self-
motivation and the third tip is that, keeping a goal in mind such as, if you are planning to thing
down, if you are planning to reduce your weight, planning that I am going to do exercise
particularly because I want to reduce my weight or let us say you have diabetes and doctor has
suggested that you should walk at least this 10,000 steps each day. So, I want to keep my
diabetes in control, so keeping a goal in mind and trying to achieve a target so in terms of
reducing weight you can say that I want to reduce 20 kilos before my marriage in the next year.
So, one-year time I have, so I will start reducing at least through two to three kilos each month
and then let me see that whether I am able to reduce more towards the end and somehow I should
reduce 20 kilos within this year.
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So, keeping this goal and setting a target for achieving this goal in terms of the limit of your
exercise in terms of the time in which you want to achieve the target that will help you remain
motivated. But the other interesting point you should know is, once your body gets habituated to
it and once your mind internalizes it and once your circadian rhythm is reset and adjusted let us
say you were all the time sleeping till you 8 o’ clock and then slowly you change this habit and
started getting up at five and then having a coffee and then refreshing yourself and reaching the
venue at 5:30 for your exercise.

Now in about one month and one and half months, this habit will be internalized and even if you
want to give it up, this will give you prompting by making you feel restless the day you miss
reaching the venue and doing some exercise. So, the trick again is to get this internalized, get this
as a spontaneous activity so that even if you leave it, your own body should be telling you oh!
you skipped it I am feeling Restless I am NOT happy with what you have done today. So
tomorrow take me again and slightly do more, so that I am happy. So, if that inner Drive is
triggered automatically and if you help to do that so then nobody can stop you from doing
exercise.

(Refer Slide Time: 22:53)

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Now, on days when you cannot again do really exercise because of some work pressure, because
of an important event or as I said, any kind of disastrous situation that forced you to exert more
time on work and minimize your regular exercise. Now, on those days when you miss your
exercise, supplement it by other alternatives. So instead of going by car or bike to your work
what you can do is, you can just walk, you can walk to your office if it is walkable or you can
cycle.

If you can go by cycle, slightly go let us say 15 minutes or 20 minutes in advance and then when
you reach the office, instead of going by lift you can climb stairs and sooner or later what will
happen when you start doing these supplemented activities, sometimes you may enjoy your
supplemented activities, so eventually you can make them regular also. This I am saying apart
from your regular exercise, you may resume your regular exercise.

But, still you feel that apart from going to gym and then jogging on the treadmill, so I also feel
that I should walk to the office or cycle to the office, okay and I should instead of just having
bath at my bathroom I should also go to the swimming pool and enjoy taking a swim and then
having another bath in the evening or so. These supplemented activities will also add up to give
you that extra boost in managing your health.
Now, if all these things are not working out try to make it attractive, try to make exercise a fun.
Today there are so many electronic gadgets and use the latest gadgets to monitor your health. So
today you can use your mobile, there are very good apps, I don’t want to advertise apps, you
yourself can explore so many apps, you can use them on your mobile, you can use them on your
watch, these days these electronic gears have come by which you can connect your mobile with
the watch and then track your steps basically at least the 10,000 for a day count.

You can check your heart rate, you can check your pulse rate and then you can even set alerts
which will tell you that oh! you are sitting for a long time, why don’t you take a quick walk so
that will keep you motivated and at the same time if you walk your 10,000 steps for that day you
will get a icon, so that comes as if a person rewarding you, so it will show you a cup and it will
say that you have achieved your target so that will again motivate you in a very funny manner.
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Or in case you are interested in your looks and appearance and then you are interested in
shopping and all that, then you should promise yourself new running shoes or sportswear
provided you start exercising regularly, you can tell yourself that okay, if I complete atleast 45
days, so then I will go for better shoes and something that is costly if I go for six months okay, so
you tell yourself, promise yourself and then treat yourself with these kind of costumes.

The other interesting way by which you can make it attractive is, by participating in local
competitions, so people organize local competitions even for walking, cycling and then there are
marathons and then occasionally you may win also. So, you will feel encouraged by small
victories if you are able to participate in local competitions. But, the most important point is that
once you have formed, gained a kind of rhythm by your continuous and then consistent efforts,

(Refer Slide Time: 27:33)

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you should avoid breaking the rhythm, you should avoid breaking it especially for very minor
reasons particularly a slight cold, light fever, slight headache, some sneezing. Now, these are
sometimes convincing excuses for giving up exercise for some time, some days, but then you
should not yield to these kinds of convincing excuses, in fact they are lame excuses. If you really
want to make yourself stronger, you should ignore these slight ones, of course if your fever is
very high and then even you feel very weak so it is not advisable to go to the gym and then exert
yourself.

But you should realize that all minor ailments will disappear with persistent exercise okay, of
course you can minimize the intensity if you really feel less energetic on those days, so let us say
if you walk for 45 minutes at least 15 to 20 minutes you should take a quick walk so that the
rhythm is not broken and just before concluding I would like to give you one more tip so when
you exhaust yourself, let us say interms of jogging particularly, and then if you are let us say if
you are taking rounds on some stadium and then first day you take two rounds, second day 3,4
and then slowly you reach up to 10 rounds, you will find that you will start palpitating and then
you will feel tempted to open your mouth and then use the mouth for breathing. Now, you should
not inhale or exhale using the mouth so this is very important because even when you find it
difficult to exhale, inhale through your nostrils you should avoid using your mouth, you should
keep your mouth shut and use only the nostrils for breathing and that is the key to reducing

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weight, because when you open it and inhale as well as exhale using your mouth especially while
inhaling you are inhaling lot of air.

Then, that is not going to help you to reduce your weight, but you may reduce or not, but then
you avoid taking so much of air by opening your mouth, but that will also help you to build your
stamina.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:22)

So, with this note, let me conclude with some thoughts for you to think it over further from very
good philosophers and eminent people. The first one is from Arnold H. Glasgow, he says that,
“Your body is the baggage you must carry through life.” So your body is the baggage you must
carry through life. “The more excess the baggage, the shorter the trip.” So, the more excess
particularly interms of weight, so gaining weight becoming obese, gaining fat, getting cholesterol
then added with cholesterol you get blood pressure, and then along with blood pressure, diabetes
joins.
So, the more excess the baggage, the shorter the trip. And look at the next famous quote from
Thomas Jefferson, he says: “We never repent of having eaten too little.” In fact this is given as a
tip for those people who have stomach related problems, those who get stomach upset very easily

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so it suggested that they should slightly eat less, instead of stuffing the stomach with the food
items, so instead of filling it or instead of overfilling the stomach instead of overeating because
as it is said we never repent of having eaten too little.

But we always repent of having eaten too more, too much than what is required and the last one
from the famous philosopher Socrates he says that, “The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat
to live.” And it is a question that you need to ask whether you, like the rest of the people, you
live to eat that means you keep on eating, there are people like they always keep something in
there hand, so some kind of chocolates or some kind of cookies in their hand and some food item
in the car, some items for munching in the office. So, wherever they go, the fridge is stuffed with
lot of food items and any slight opportunity they keep eating. So they say that they enjoy eating
but then it looks like as if their entire life is dependent on eating only, whereas, you should ask
yourself whether you would like to be like Socrates who says that, I eat to live which means for
him eating is only a need, a basic requirement and that has to be fulfilled so that you live your
life satisfactorily. So, do not make that as a predominating one so that it destroys the comfort and
happiness of your life itself. So, with this thought, let me just tell you to go through these two
reference books.

(Refer Slide Time: 33:33)

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One is, Are you Killing yourself Mr. Executive? and the other one, especially, if you want to
reduce your weight, Thinking Thin is the book that I already explained in the previous one. So,
thank you for watching this video, I will come back to you with one more thought on Managing
Health and in the next video, so let us focus on How You Can Manage Your Diet as well as How
You Can Manage Your Sleep. So, till then, have a good sleep, eat well, eat sufficiently well and
then stay happy, stay healthy. Thank you.

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