Personal Fitness

I apologize for my absence.  The past couple of weeks have been busy with other priorities.  As I mentioned I want this blog to be diverse, filled with more than just rants about my progress and stats.  This is one such post.   

Often I reflect on what fitness really means.  As I look around me in my everyday world I am bombarded with ads, promises, myths, hype and most often CONFUSION.  Is fitness really biceps the size of basketballs? What about running the distance of most daily commutes?  Or is fitness being able to get in a cage with another human only to survive intense beatings?  While these are indeed great shows of strength and may also show physical fitness, I can't bring myself to accept that this is indeed the mark of fitness for the average person that I am.  

            So what should I set as my horizon?  Should I subject myself to the promises of losing 10lbs per week not by exercise and healthy eating but rather by digesting a laboratory formulated concoction of  pills and powders?  I simply can not!  I will admit that I have been down that road before and that there is no substitute for hard work and proper eating habits.

So the questions still lingers in my mind as to what fitness means.  To determine the answer for myself and maybe some of you, I reflect on capabilities.  Real functional capabilities.  I want to go for a run, I want to get down and exercise not to bulk up, but to feel good.  I want energy to sustain my body each day.  I want to have the confidence to push my body to it's  limits.  I want to look in the mirror and feel good about who is looking back.  I want my wife to be proud of who she is with.  Most of all I want to feel good, look good, and look forward, with and excited attitude, to exercise.

So now I have an idea of what personal fitness means to me.  How do I achieve this?  I believe that we are all diverse and there is not a single gym or program in the world that can meet the styles and goals of everybody.  When you picture what fitness is to you, then your methods of achieving personal fitness should reflect that.  For example I want to have functional strength, so I try to focus on push ups and chest exercises, biceps and core strength.  I look for opportunities to work harder in my yard.  I use an ax and shovel to remove a stump rather than a stump grinder.  My body might ache afterwards, but it feels good.  I don't find myself in the gym doing endless repetitions or following a DVD of intense intervals.  While I have been down these roads and certain aspects of those methods are appealing and lend themselves to my cause, as a whole they are not for me.  I have a bench and a couple sets of dumbbells in my garage for a few key exercises that fit my style of exercise.  What I am getting at is that your workouts need to reflect you as an individual.  If exercise is not a part of you then you will burn out only to feel like a failure.... I have been there.  Look inside yourself, decide what you want to be, then customize a regimen that fits that mold.  That being said, I will report in an upcoming post what I have set up for myself in this regard.