“General Fitness”- What are your Practical Uses for Abnormal Strength?
Posted on 02. Jul, 2009 by Dream in Exercise, Lifestyle Design
After my first session training with an experienced HIT professional- Patrick Diver- we were discussing uses for strength in everyday life and why people exercised to begin with.
Of course there are
- health reasons
- aesthetic reasons
- performance considerations for sports
- rehabilitation purposes (which I will post about soon)
and so on… but what’s the core reason?
As fantastic as proper exercise can be for your life- notice I did not say exercise in a generic sense- what is the real reason you are working out?
Patrick said something that really struck me- “general fitness”.
It sounds a bit generic at first glance, but I- now- believe it actually does a great job as a term at encompassing the multitude of reasons one may exercise.
…
Not long after that I was on my boat over spring break with some friends. We were running the boat around, tubing and what not, having a great time.
This girl fell off the tube and opted to get back in the boat. It was deep and there wasn’t a chance she could push off the bottom, and for some reason I can’t recall she didn’t want to use the ladder in the back of the boat.
Without thinking about it, I reached down (using my legs as well) and lifted her clear out of the water in one motion without too much effort. My friend on the boat at the time about $#!+ his pants knowing full well that this was no easy feat- the girl probably weighing ~120 pounds or so.
When I realized what I had just done, that term “general fitness” rang in my head again. I thought about it some more and appreciated that this same strength probably allowed me to hold onto the tube for a longer period of time (as well as a Jet Ski more recently at 70+ mph) than most people.
Kind of an interesting side note, that’s my 12 year old brother sitting behind me. He’s about 15 pounds lighter than me (20 years old). It’s a good view at how I looked growing up “chubby”.
Today I’d like to ask, what do you use your strength for? Or perhaps more importantly, why exactly do you exercise?
I ask because exercise can be a profoundly damaging habit if performed too frequently and- counter intuitively- not intensely enough.
I believe a lot of people- myself included at one point in time- use exercise as a “stress reliever” only to induce more stress on their bodies and minds than they relieved through exercise- leaving many people tired, anxious, frustrated with a lack of results, and so on.
Some oddball ones from me…
- Monday night team dodgeball performance
- fishing and other water sports as mentioned previously
- moving things around the house that room mates/family can not
- continually promoting knee health (I have a bad left knee from high school football)
- biking fast when need be
- challenging myself mentally and physically to the max
This deserves an entire post in itself, but I believe high intensity training really challenges you at a “core” masculine level.
- learning self discipline (resisting the impulse to over train, not grimacing, proper breathing)
- wrestling with friends (I about killed Nilatak the other night when he tried to jokingly push me)
- long term cardiovascular health
- to help my body stay lean
I would have to say however that one of the biggest reasons I exercise is for the unexpected and unforeseen.
“Predicting the future is an exercise in futility at best.”
You never know when being stronger as a result of intense exercise- mentally and physically- will come into play. It could be tomorrow, it could be ten years from now, it could be never (doubt it).
It could be for some mudane task, or saving someone’s (your own?) life.
So I have to ask, why do you exercise? Get clear, get specific, and move past untested assumptions. I’d love to hear them!
-Dream
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