Save The Dad Jokes And Let’s Get Real About Men’s Health

How do you get a man’s attention? That may sound like the start of a joke or seeking dating advice, but it’s a valid question to ask when it’s about men’s health. It’s time to pay more attention to men’s whole-body health. 

Strength vs Health

It does not dismiss women’s capability to acknowledge that biologically, men are typically built stronger in upper and lower body strength. But we also can’t dismiss that this biological difference often attributes a false set of health ideals for men. Yes, men can be biologically stronger, but strength and health are very different things!

Health comes from a total sense of well-being in body, mind, and emotions. The core is a combination of these factors, and so we must pay attention to all of it. Men need health more than they need strength.

The Strong Man Myth

Men are held to an ideal of strong, an ideal that focuses only on their ability to do more and achieve beyond expectation; they can handle it, right? And men are the first to believe in the idea rather than the reality. To be strong – or seem strong – men will deny their limitations or ignore their body’s messages. It is not healthy to muscle through and dismiss your physical or mental health.

There is a belief that strong men handle pain, so this gets translated into habits that push through soreness, aches, or worse, emotional pain of defeat, sadness, hurt, or fear. It is dangerous to ignore these signals from your body. 

Accommodating Pain

We all must compensate and push through pain to get out of our comfort zones, mentally and physically, but men are not always allowed to admit or set limits to get there. Women, too, but there are more stereotypes around the stubborn man ignoring pain for a reason. 

Media and messaging everywhere show gritty men sweating through their pain to accomplish more physical exertion than they believed they could do. The message is that strong men have the mental will to blast out of their comfort zone.

While exercise should extend your limits to work and achieve body transformation, it is not just about ignoring and blasting past those limits; pushing gradually and attending to recovery is the real recipe. It is not about mentally pushing away all feelings to focus on achieving one strength goal. 

Time To Get Healthy

This is the part where men need to pay more attention. Do not tolerate and ignore pain as part of your health routine. Pain from exercise is the body’s way to say it needs recovery. Long stretches of the muscles and deep pressure of the limbs matter so that the work achieves best results. Understand your body better to be truly healthy.

Stop thinking of the work out as the key but one piece of the total picture. Add in yoga, massage, and meditation to really achieve wellness and true strength, the kind that comes from the Core.