The muscular system in the body, what you do to your body can have positive effects from physical activity. Cardiovascular and strength training each provide a certain benefit your body needs to stay healthy.

Cardio such as running, walking, swimming, high intensity training, hiking, biking, and other sports that involve moving around alot consistently takes oxygen from your lungs, your heart is a powerhouse because it's providing blood to your organs which then function creating oxygen. This type of training is healthy for your heart because as you move your heart is pumping more blood than usual.

Strength training helps build muscle and keep them strong from the movements with the added resistance you're pushing. Training all the body parts on your body creates a well proportioned body. Combining both cardio and strength training can create a body/physique you want.

With all these activities you're doing, adding stretching to your routine is important because it will relax your joints and muscles from the stress you put on them.

The video that I watched on Youtube was a presentation with a lady named Wendy Suzuki. She presented on why she thinks exercise has positive effects on mental health. Including exercise into your daily routine has positive changes for your mood and focus.

Exercising helps protect your brain from mental conditions like anxiety and depression. In the presentation she includes, “exercise is the most transformative thing for your brain.” There are three parts of the brain that are seeing this helpful positive change. The prefrontal cortex which is the part of the brain that is responsible for decision making and personality, the temporal lobe - forms and keeps new long term memories from facts and events, and the hippocampus is what keeps important memories that last for an entire lifetime. There's a brief burst of electrical activity within the brain that triggers these brain hormones from exercise or any physical activity.

This video is very informative in what I’m researching and provides great details on what goes on in your brain during exercise. It’s more than just moving your body, it's changing the ways you think, and setting yourself on a positive mindset to achieve great things. Encouraging yourself to achieve something and actually having it, will inspire others to get out there and pursue their dreams. The mindset of an athlete is to see success and strive for greatness, I would want students to be able to encourage themselves and others by this.

The article talks about training your body to become more capable of the physical abilities it has. Activities like sports, exercise, and any activity involving movement can train the body into the shape you want.

Training the mind is also important as well and it has ties with your flexibility because your training the mind to settle and relax, your using this as an improvement for movements like stretching, bending, and reaching.

This is compared to teens and adults, the training is a whole lot different for adults because their bodies are fully developed and can withstand the physical stress they put on their bodies. Teenagers can train like this but their bodies are more susceptible to injury, if not training the right way. When it comes to the results teenagers cannot achieve the physical results as an adult would because their bodies are still maturing, but can still see results.

Physical fitness is at its lowest point in the United States because people are more reaching for the sedentary lifestyle. Experts believe that the increase of obesity in the U.S. is caused by the trends in television, little physical activity, the internet, and video games. The results of this are alarming because more people are dying from cardiovascular disease, cancer is on the rise, and other diseases like diabetes are becoming common in the U.S.

A research project form the CDC by Olivia Uchima, MA1,2; Yan Yan Wu, PhD1,2; Colette Browne, DrPH 2; Kathryn L. Braun, DrPH1,2, they are trying to find out why there's an increase of diabetes in these ethnic groups. They conducted a survey that helped them find answers and solutions.

People in the area would voluntarily complete the survey and/or be randomly selected from the organization by a phone call to the home. Participants would be asked personal questions like height, weight, age, income, education, marital status, exercise, eating/drinking, and smoking.

The research has brought an interest to me because I'm getting an insight on how other communities' health stand points are and how they are treating diabetes. The survey they have taken is similar to what we have. Providing all the statistics on many different people, so that they can get a better understanding on what is causing the community to suffer from some type of disease. We share a connection with these people because they are also Indigenous and also live in rural areas. The ways we choose how to live, affects our health and the choices we make.

The importance of exercise in the Native American community. He talked about the Jim Thorpe All Indian Games, how this program was used to help people move and exercise, while still practicing their Native culture.

The author also mentions restrictions on Native culture back in history, he said that it cause and effect on the way we live today. In the article he says, ¨Yet, even with past restrictions on Indian movement and poor-quality food, the current high incidence of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems are more closely related to contemporary fast food, junk food, and lack of exercise.¨

We tend to be living towards the American lifestyle, we choose more of what is fast and easy than to do what we are taught as children. Organizations like Powwow Sweat and "RezMove´s" dance and cardio workout, are helping keep the community healthy and are motivating the people to live a healthy lifestyle.

Our people´s health is important because we are a unique community and we need to preserve ourselves so that we can teach younger generations what we were taught as children from our parents and grandparents. They too would want to see our community to prosper this is what their goals as parents were. We can't fall into fully embracing another culture that we are not Native to.

Sticking to our roots on where we come from and maintaining the life of living as a Native American individual is not a goal but a purpose to why we are here.

Terry Todd who was a competitive powerlifter. As a kid growing up he found an interest in weight lifting. He was discouraged in weight training because no one used to be interested in lifting. Everyone said ¨you won't be able to scratch the back of your neck, comb your hair, brush your teeth,¨ as he got into lifting he believed why people believed in this nonsense, he told himself it's easy to see if you do it and to prove that it doesn´t make you have these disabilities.

Terry was a lifelong student of strength training. He believed that learning from the greats of the past we would recognize and inspire greatness in ourselves and others.

His ability to see potential in others, to connect people and history, tell others´ stories, made a great impact on people across sport and discipline. I was inspired by this because he is connecting people together so that they can all learn from each other to become better.

Connecting a community of people to work together is what helps create improvement in what we're working at and ourselves. With the help from others we can achieve our goals much faster and easier than working alone.

Globally connecting helps turn something small like an idea into something huge that can create a great impact, which causes change.