By Kris Germain
Your body needs to be strong.
If you are reading this piece, it’s likely that you already feel that way, but in reality, everyone wants a strong body, they just might not understand why, or even what “Strong” means.
This conversation is not about building your Bench Press or Squat or Deadlift. It will not discuss the specific schemes of making your body strong. I’m not going to prescribe sets, reps and rest ratios for you.
This conversation should serve as a filter for you. As you are choosing your scheme or methodology or even your Coach, these ideas, couched in one basic overarching concept, should be able to help you stay on track. This is the unifying concept:
Longevity is the thing everyone wants, even if you don’t know it at the moment.
Strong means the ability to choose what you want to do instead of being relegated to a way of existing because of various weaknesses.
Strong means functional and robust and playful.
Functional is the ability to do things. Pick things up, carry things, sit down on the toilet and stand again. You need to be able to put on your socks in the morning without pain. These are all functional requirements for the rest of your life.
Robust is the ability to get knocked around. Life physically knocks you around. At any moment you might trip and fall, or get rear-ended, or catch the flu. Strong bodies get knocked around, recover and move on.
Playful is the ability to move in ways that bring you joy. This is a crucial metric that most coaches aren’t shouting loud enough about and most people aren’t hunting hard enough for. At CrossFit 310 I try to preach “If we’re not having fun, we’re not doing it right”. If movement is nothing but burdensome to you, you won’t continue to move.
Coach Greg Glassman famously said at the crescendo of his World-Class Fitness in 100 Words, “Regularly learn and play new sports”. My mom has never read that article, but she started golfing at age 65. She’s 75 now and she describes golfing with friends in near euphoric language. She’s my hero.
Playful doesn’t have to mean sports. You could find joy in walking or hiking. It could also be wrestling with your young kids, letting them climb on you like a jungle gym. I’ve had numerous people begin to train with me so that they could enjoy playing with their kids.
This article continues to develop a conversation we’re exploring in the pursuit of a thriving lifestyle. Thriving compared to just getting by. Thriving compared to the tyranny of our metastisized To-Do lists and impossible Calendars.
If we want to thrive in life, we need to be able to do things, recover from things and be available to play when we want to.
Need help? Book a free 30 min conversation with a Coach.
In Part 2 of “How To Make Your Body Strong”, I will give you 5 areas to help you filter what’s important in making you strong and assessing areas you are lacking.
