Unforgetting Whole-Life Fitness
Fitness has always played a big part in my life. As a young teenager I started lifting weights, immediately fell in love, and for the most part...I’ve not stopped. I’m 40 now and by God’s grace I’ve been able to stay “fit” for my whole adult life. Now this isn’t to say that it’s been without trouble. I’ve battled severe back issues, neck issues, various forms of tendonitis, knee and shoulder surgery, the birth of 3 children (my wife did most of that), both the ordinary and extraordinary occurrences of life’s troubling circumstances, and all the other excuses that have tried to derail my efforts to fight against the natural tendencies to sit around drinking milkshakes.
But in all my efforts over the last 25 years, what does it even mean to be “fit”? Over the past five years I’ve fallen in love with CrossFit. It’s not only my primary source of training, but I’ve coached it for the past 5 years. If you’re reading this and don’t know what CrossFit is, just Google it and you’ll be inundated with facts and opinions telling you about the cult-like following of a fitness revolution that has truly helped redefine “fitness.” CrossFit has also become one of the more controversial systems of fitness in the last decade. People are rarely indifferent about CrossFit…they either love it or hate it.
My purpose here isn’t to promote CrossFit…although you absolutely should find a good gym, give it three months and see what you think. I bring up CrossFit because they define fitness as "increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains." I know…you’re like…well that clears it all up! Let me simplify it for you. You’re more fit when you can do more work in less time while doing a variety of activities. This applies to any and all work you’re wanting to accomplish: weightlifting, swimming, running, rowing, gymnastics…hot dog eating (it’s actually astonishing how much work those guys put in to eat all those hot dogs)!
Here’s the deal and here’s why we’re talking about this. Once you get past the somewhat confusing language, what makes CrossFit’s definition of fitness so meaningful is this…it’s measurable! We can spend so much time pedaling a bike, lifting a barbell, climbing the stairs…elliptical-ing on the elliptical machine, and all the while never get any fitter. We may sweat. We may breathe heavy. We may burn lots of calories. But even though we’re experiencing very specific outcomes, it doesn’t mean that we’re getting the most benefit for our effort.
Pools of sweat, screaming heart rate and agonizing muscle soreness are all fine, and can be markers that you’re on the right track. However, what makes the difference, and what indicates a genuine improvement in fitness is if we climb more stairs, lift more weights, swim and run farther and faster, elliptical more...ellipses…than we did last month and last week and yesterday. If we see improvement, then we’re on the right track.
Hopefully, you’ve anticipated that this discussion about the measurability of fitness isn’t merely about physical fitness (i.e. the pursuit of a stronger body). My hope is to encourage you in the pursuit of a fit life. Yes, of course a strong body is important, but more than that we want a strong...a fit... mind and heart and soul. And just like we can use tools to measure our progress towards physical fitness, my thought is that we can find ways to measure our progress in other areas of whole-life fitness.
Identify an area of weakness in your life; maybe it's a broken relationship or an area where you're lacking self-discipline. Maybe you feel bored or stuck in your job or you're struggling with questions concerning your faith. Whatever it is for you, take some time to think of steps you could take to strengthen those weak muscles. Utilizing the steps you've come up with, make sure you can measure your progress in those steps. As you keep moving forward, growth will happen and you'll find yourself living a more fit life than you did yesterday.
“This life is temporary, this body is temporary, but while I’m here i want to get as much out of it as I can.”
- Rich Froning, CrossFit Athlete