To follow up from my last column, this will be the second in a series of seven principles that I will discuss in fitness and how they apply to our life dilemmas.

Just like the body in working it out, consistent care of our actions, relationships and life will ensure that we have a solid foundation in our physiological spirit.

In the last column, I discussed how movement preparation is the active movement routine that has replaced the traditional pre-exercise stretch.

This preparation allows for more blood to enter the muscles being worked and prevents future injury while working on a cold muscle.

In life, we have skills and talents that must be activated everyday in order to keep them. You cannot wait for things to happen; you must move forward.

The second principle I want to present is a concept called pre-habilitation. This is the proactive approach to protecting yourself form injury.

The following are known as your pillar strength in fitness and athletic performance: your neck, shoulders, core (abs and lower back) and hips. These are the foundation to efficient human movement and are vital to performance and health.

An analogy to all of this is a car. Even if nothing is wrong with it, doing routine check ups and taking care of it will make certain that nothing goes wrong with it.

Doing a bunch of shoulder and abdominal crunches will work those areas but not stabilize. In any exercise you do, try to find ways to do the same thing while struggling to find your balance.

The struggle you find in a balance act is when your pillar strength is engaged. The most important key to this idea is good posture-buttocks out, lumbar region comfortably curved, shoulders back, chest out and chin up and forward.

Some examples that can be applied in your work out are your arm or shoulder routine balancing on one leg, squats and lunges in a high-low complex with one leg positioned higher than the other and abdominal exercises very slow and arms extended as far away from you as possible.

Just as a lack of pre-habilitation will result in injury and surgery that requires rehabilitation, a lack of preparation in other areas of life will result in painful developments later.

If you don’t take daily care of your body, relationships, career and mental health, you’re going to end up in a situation requiring some major rehabilitation and damage control.

Apply pre-habilitation to all aspects of your life, and develop strategies to take daily steps toward reaching your goals.

When you engage in exercise, don’t forget to remind yourself the honest fact that if there are no pains then there are no gains.