Fitness Philosophy
There are many different ways to exercise. We can see that all around us, with the plethora of methodologies like CrossFit, bodybuilding, functional fitness, and the myriad group classes. Besides sports training, I feel like all of these types of workouts have missed the mark on preparing people for real life. But in real life, you need to be healthy and able to adapt to whatever is demanded of you. What is usually asked of you looks nothing like what is asked of you in the gym during any of those previously mentioned workouts.
What is most important when choosing what program is right for you is that the program fits into your life and meets your needs. I have been exercising for over two decades now and have been a fitness professional for 10 years. I have tried many different exercise programs over the years and from that experience have developed a system of what I believe is most useful for the everyday man and woman. My goal is to maximize the benefit and reduce the risk for the average person. For most of us, we don’t have a lot of time or energy to exercise. We can’t afford to injure ourselves or be so sore we can’t function optimally. We are busy with the multiple responsibilities in our lives, we need to be ready for those demands, mentally and physically.
The following list is the 10 aspects of fitness we need to include in our training routine, so we are ready for anything our life throws at us:
- Walk: cover varied terrain for a distance
- Run: fast for a short distance or slower for long-distance
- Carry: heavy items for a short distance, light items for a distance
- Throw: a variety of objects and types of throws
- Jump and Land: in a variety of directions
- Lift: Odd-shaped objects and our own bodyweight
- Balance or Safely Fall: catch our balance or safely roll out of a fall
- Non Running Aerobic demand: Swim, Bike, Ski or Row, etc.
- Odd Positions: getting into abnormal positions to grab an object or for work
- Daily Resting Positions: ones besides sitting in a chair and laying down to sleep!
Throughout a given week, you are sure to have one of these types of events in your life that you will need to do. Therefore, the question is what is of higher value to you or what are your priorities? Each person will have a higher demand in certain areas. So, you would build an exercise routine focused more on the areas you are more likely to encounter in your life and include the less often sparingly throughout your training. I will go over this in more detail in my next article, as well as the best exercises for training each fitness aspect. Please send your questions and comments to [email protected]
