What a great weekend my fellow Fitters! Saturday, it started with a great breakfast, workout in the morning, then straight to campus to enjoy the Purdue game with the suite tickets my wife and I received from some family friends (thanks Pam and Courtney!), then left there and went to a movie, then finished with a visit with friends at 9-Irish (a local fan favorite). Today was a deep-clean of the household to prepare for the holiday week. What did you do for your mental fitness this weekend? How about physical?
Last week, we talked a little bit about the 10 domains of Fitness (see post titled "Running Does Not Equal Fitness"). With all of these aspects, it can be a little daunting at first to really incorporate all of these domains into your routine. What's more, it is very common for an individual to find those aspects of fitness that appeal to us more than others. Think about it, what is your favorite exercise? Running? Olympic weightlifting? Hypertrophy training (bodybuilding)? Agility drills? I doubt that you enjoy every exercise that exists. Ever see an individual exercising that you knew could probably do with a little more cardio, or perhaps incorporate some lower body exercises (perhaps lightheartedly called "chicken legs" by their colleagues)? As I have mentioned in previous posts, it is important for overall health and fitness to be the best you can be in all domains of fitness.
Inevitably, I get asked "What do you think is the most important focus of fitness?" What a tremendous and formidable question. If you had to spend the efforts of the rest of your life on one aspect of fitness, what would I suggest?
Firstly, we are asking this question accepting the fact that nutrition is above all else when it comes to the importance of your health. Without having sound nutrition, we can forget the question completely, for fitness is foundationally rooted in appropriate nutrition. Secondly, I am not recommending that any other aspect of fitness be ignored in the pursuit of any other.
With that being said, I do believe that one aspect of fitness, if pursued with proper nutrition, could help anyone live a fulfilling life well into their 70s, 80s, and 90s. And the answer might surprise you. Flexiblity.
Flexibility, and more importantly Mobility, is vital to being able to live, in what my opinion is, a satisfying life. With great nutrition, and normal physical activity, a person's body will remain healthy. Without proper mobility, however, one will quickly suffer. Not being able to walk, turn, jump, step up, crawl, etc. will lead to a very sheltered, and frankly, boring life.
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| We can all agree, needing assist through daily tasks is undesirable. |
As we get older, many of our abilities begin to decay, but a lack of mobility in particular is a very debilitating loss. Consider the aging adult. As an older man or woman begins to move less, their body becomes much more inflexible, including loss of shoulder mobility, as well as hip mobility. They begin to lose the ability to reach over their head, or sit into a deep chair. Soon, they are unable to reach (or hold) anything near head height, and it is impossible to get in and out of a chair without assistance.
To prevent this, we need to pursue two things: We need to move, and move well, through full ranges of motion of all bodily joints. That includes overhead pressing, pushing, pulling, deep squats, and more. We also need to improve our already limited range of motion with flexibility/mobility training. Many of us are already combating 20-30+ years of grody movement (knee or back pain? Blame poor movement), and we need to restore proper, full range movement.
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| Do what you love for as long as you can! |
Want to live 100+ years going hiking in the Adirondacks, zip-lining in the Bahamas, site-seeing in France? Move your body, move it right, and work on the flexibility and the mobility to do it that way the rest of your life (and working on the other 9 domains of Fitness won't hurt either).
Stay Fit.
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