How to Fitness Pt. 1

It’s interesting: watching how people begin to perceive themselves when they are finally forced to look.  

Early in this quarantine, that collective search for self-discovery has churned out a miraculous amount of Insta-Workout-Celebrities.  I’ve seen people that I know have never stepped foot in a gym, live-streaming themselves doing push-ups in their childhood bedrooms. As a fan of health—I don’t hate it—although I doubt the motivational effects that broadcast has outside of that bedroom. 

Yet, being healthy is not just something you start doing because you suddenly have loads of free time.  It can certainly start that way, but as anyone who has had their motivation to get fit this quarantine sapped by an infatuation with Joe Exotic can attest, hoping and doing are not one in the same.

This is because health is not a choice—it’s a lifestyle.  It’s an unending desire for discomfort despite the myriad unhealthy and vastly more pleasurable options that perpetually tempt.  It’s a lifelong meditation.  

Nothing in my life has been more difficult than cultivating and accepting this mindset; yet, a journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step.

For me, human movement has always been an obsession.  Growing up, I would watch dancers, acrobrats, yogis, even the girl next door doing cartwheels in her front yard—people who could move naturally—with great envy.  I could not wrap my head around their abilities’ to contort their bodies in ways that mine was incapable of.  I played sports and went to the gym, considering myself “fit,” but that voice in the back of my mind never left: Remember all that stuff you can’t do?  

Was I built deficiently?  For most of my life, I just assumed so.

However, either by chance, or divine intervention, my journey has led me to becoming a real Personal Trainer.  My studies illuminated that I was not genetically inept, I had just developed a severe lack of flexibility, core strength and range of motion throughout a lifetime of improper movement patterns.  In other words, my lack of bodily awareness led to misaligned joints, tendons, ligaments and muscles that simply could not be positioned in the ways they were inherently intended.  As so, I came to the understanding that: A) There is an optimal way for humans to move; and B) If you don’t move that way, you’re moving sub-optimally.

It would be the equivalent of Thomas Edison discovering the lightbulb, but still choosing to light his house by candle—I couldn't unsee it.  While it took some time to accept that everything I had been doing physically up until that point was wrong, in addition to how much work needed to be done to correct those years of wrongness, my ways of moving—and thinking—eventually shifted. 

As my labor bore fruit, my obsession grew, and so I developed my unique meditation.  

I began minimizing my time in a seated position, opting to do my work or study on the floor or a foam-roller.  My gym-time increased dramatically, as time spent warming up and cooling down became a priority. I began trying to stretch or loosen tight muscles in every second that I wasn’t doing something else, and even when I was doing something else, I was still focused on trying to stretch or loosen tight muscles.  Some call my level of attention to human movement neurotic, I say: As a human that was built to move, what else is there to pay attention too?

With my body as my hobby and a vehicle for subjective growth, I have an easily accessible distraction from the absurdity that has become our reality.  Compared to those who only stop reading or thinking about COVID-19 when they’re at the fridge or watching Joe Exotic, am I really more neurotic? 

I think not.

And while I don’t expect my level of commitment from anyone whose well-being is contingent upon their use of Microsoft Excel, rather than a dumbbell; if you acknowledge that your health is important, and shame on you if you don’t, working out because you want to “look good” is simply not enough to build the lifelong habit that working out needs to be. 

This is because willpower is finite.  What happens when you grow older, you have three kids, there’s a global pandemic that’s requiring you to stay home?  “Looking good” will not be enticing enough to pull you off the couch and do burpees in your living room when you’re not sure the next time you will encounter a human being that is not a member of your immediate family.  

Motivation in times like these can only endure if your preferred form of movement has become a craft, an obsession—a release.  Yogis and runners provide the best examples of this. 

Most do not seek to be faster or more flexible than anyone else; just faster and more flexible than they were the last time they went for a run or stretch.  To them, the appeal of exercise is not about being faster, stronger or better-looking than others, it’s about knowing that whenever they get a chance to return to the road or their mat, there is nowhere else they will be. 

   

Some call this The Zone, others, A Flow State.  Call it what you want but understand that it is nothing more than a meditation.  

Not a day goes by that I do not envision the contraction and expansion of my muscles while I’m exercising or just moving; that I don’t contemplate the alignment of my joints; how I need to strengthen the right side of my core to fix an imbalance in my hips.  Until you find a form of movement that allows you to lose yourself in the present moment; until the joy of fitness is the distraction you get from everything else you have going in your life; until moving your body becomes your escape—you’ll never fully get it.

Having never experienced this level of focus may be why your attempts to get fit have sputtered while the world tries to put out this fire.  Yet, while trapped at home, there is no better time to develop your own unique way of escaping the madness; a distraction from the distortion of reality that has become our new normal—a happy place.  I can assure you that place will not be your couch.