What fitness is and what it is not...

 

There is a LOT of information on fitness, health and wellness etc., but I find that the more information there is, the harder it is to get the information that you need. Every other week another product, diet or exercise “technique” pops up. I am a 30-year veteran fitness professional and can actually remember when there was no industry. I was part of its development in the USA, Germany and Switzerland. Looking through my lens it does not look as if there are really that many ”new” things at all. Sometimes quite the opposite as a lot of things are recycled and repackaged. The bottom line is it’s hard to find accurate information.

In all the things we see there are only a few major sources for the information that comprises the systems and products of the fitness industry.

Design a body.

Fitness is not fashion or a fashion. There is a tendency to package and cross pollinate the two. In business this is advantageous, but in practice for the individual for which fitness is always individual; it is very detrimental to the practice and principals that are what true fitness is.

The fashion as fitness or vice versa tends to require conformity to a certain “look”. It is very apparent what that means when we examine how women and men are currently depicted versus how they were. If we look back in fashion/fitness in 5 year increments over the past 30 years the differences are quite revealing.

A simple question to ask is was the bodies of the past not healthy, because they did not look like the present fit-fashion? How much of how our bodies appear actually indicates and represents our health and well being? And how much of it is style?

Is health and well being the true goal of your fitness regime or is appearance the goal itself?

If appearance is the goal IT IS NOT HEALTH AND FITNESS.

I would say that for some the appearance is the goal itself, but for quite a lot of us it is not and yet the choices we make, the fitness related activities and lifestyle choices still reflect more a fashion sense than those related to fitness and well being.

I was training a model a few years back for the cover of Sports Illustrated (I won’t say who!) She was doing a very severe training regimen. She was very strict. Pilates, cardio free weights/ body weight conditioning and of course limiting her caloric intake. She had a very low body fat percentage and in my opinion had reached her physical ideal. She was happy with the results and I was very happy with the results of her training. I believed she had reached her physical ideal. Both of us were particularly proud that it was done naturally without drugs and or starvation. One day she came in to train and was visibly upset. She informed me that regardless of her efforts and her appearance the agency wanted her to go in for surgery and have a rib removed!

She did not have surgery for that campaign and she went on to be featured several times. The point is men and woman all over the world are manipulated by design to have specific images impregnated into their consciousness to stimulate the sale of fashion as fitness products. The reality is something quite different. The models themselves don’t represent the ideal except through severe methods that in many cases compromise health and reduce fitness.

Physical fitness training should support your individual lifestyle and take into account your specific needs. Fitness training can alleviate pain, discomfort and restore abilities to an amazing degree. I have seen with my own clients and student’s remarkable progress and development. Particularly in restoring function regaining abilities that have been degraded or lost for years.

I remember a client, a wife of a doctor, who when she came to me could not turn her head more than an inch or so on either side. I asked her when she first noticed and she remarked that it was when she went to park her car that it was not possible to look behind her any longer that she realized something must be done. Candidly she admitted that it had taken years to get to this point, but the parking car incident was the turning point for her. A few months later after a combination of flexibility-relaxation and body awareness training with some postural corrective exercise thrown in for good measure, full range of motion was restored.

What stands out for me in the memory was the level of concern that accompanied her visit that she could no longer look behind her. The loss of a function that had been taken for granted. The main cause of which was NOT DOING.

• By avoiding balance in activity and exercise training. It is the limiting of activity that diminishes our ability to do.

• Exercise should balance the lifestyle by complementing the missing components, while enhancing the existing.

• When selecting training modalities and regimens think of what will better support and aid you in functioning better.

Lifestyle support

A construction worker for instance may think training is not necessary because the job they do is very strenuous. However, strength training can be used to balance your body. Strengthening muscles that are not used as much, but are crucial and needed to support the more active muscles, stabilize joints and reinforce or teach proper alignment for lowering, lifting, pushing and pulling.

If you have a very active lifestyle…

We tend to use/emphasize the same set of muscles over and over for certain activity, while others degrade even when we are very active.

• Stretch

• Learn passive stretching and master body mechanics for better movement efficiency.

• Learning better movement skills is imperative.

• Complement your lifestyle

General tips

• Train the body in its entirety. Do not select parts to enhance or develop without taking into account how your body functions as a whole.

• Training is learning. It is as much an intellectual pursuit as any academic discipline. It should be approached that way.

• Don't skip steps respect the process of progression. Do not expect to be good at something that you are unfamiliar with.

• Avoid exercise that does not include or respect progression.

• Seek a holistic approach. Try to find activities that complement each other to make a complete system of taking care of yourself.

• Don’t do too much.

• Don’t do too little.

• Nutrition, not diet!  Seek an approach that teaches the principles that you can understand and integrate into your life that work for you as an individual.

• Exercise outdoors when possible

There is joy in learning. It is a reinforcement to exercise adherence. It is wonderful to not be able and then progress to being able. This is the process of exercise movement training.

Em

Train for better movement efficiency.