Reinventing Fitness - The game of life?
- By Chris Hardwicke
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- 21 Dec, 2015
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Are you winning in the game of life?
The ultimate workout is a skills course!
As the new age of fitness arrives, many are aware that the movements involved are considered skills. Many are useful, some are just plain old fun, and others carry a “wow” as we master skills we thought beyond our reach. Jumping rope, performing your first chin-up, going through the monkey bars hand after hand, walking on your hands, rapid and wildly varying hops and jumps on grids and over hurdles are a few of the hundreds of skills we are mastering currently.
These skills are integral parts of all sports and in fact, a large portion of this new fitness design came from sports drills. When we train the body with these drills and acquire these skills, we raise our potential for participation in many of life’s physical pleasures that were passing us by. If you go to the beach and spot a volleyball game, you may choose to jump in and participate or play basketball, baseball or football with your children. One may choose to take a long hike or learn something new such as rock climbing.
More than a few of us have tried to do these “weekend warrior” activities without mastery of these skills drills and the end result fills emergency rooms and doctors offices throughout the land. Attempting these activities unprepared is also a frequent cause of heart attacks. More commonly we end up with extreme aches and pains that deter us from further participation.
Much more basically, those of us in our later years can put our grandchild on our shoulders, let them ride us like a horse or take up something new like tennis or gardening. Many in their twilight years will fall and break their hip because they have not maintained basic balance, agility skills and built strong bones. No matter what your age and ability level there are many, many benefits to this type of training.
As we say in my gym, “Frontier Movement gets you off the bench and back in the game— the game of life.”
Here is how we do it. When we put forward a new workout, with a whole new group of new skills, there is excitement in the room as we go through the teaching phase. Then we rehearse and refine our movement as we begin to imprint it in our neural network. At the end of the hour session, most have command of the skill at hand.
By the end of the second performance of a given workout, the athletes and fitness buffs are aggressively pushing their limits with the movements. This is true even though they have not seen these particular movements for four months! Meanwhile, most of the general population of my facility is beginning to show confidence and joy as they now “own” the skills in question.
My seniors and others who came to me with many physical limitations, which they thought to be a normal part of aging, see a big step backwards in time. Indeed many of them are adding skills they never had at any age!! The sense of accomplishment and self confidence infuses our daily activities with a tremendous sense of well being.
It is a surprise to many new clients that fear enters into the work, because to watch others perform, you would see no cause for concern. As many approach a hurdle only six inches off the floor, you would think they had been asked to jump the Grand Canyon along side Evil Knievel. Of course, they make the jump and go on to much bigger jumps and a ripple effect of breaking this barrier flows through their entire being.
It is impossible to put words together about an hour in the gym that is so transformative in nature. We become addicted, in a certain way, to the process involved. We begin to question ourselves. What are my limitations? Is there no end to the progress I will make, despite my age? Will my energy level continue rise like this? Where will I be a few years from now?
To these questions and other like them, I simply say, “The possibilities are endless.” So, what are you waiting for? Get off the bench and back in the game—the game of life!
We are fight or flight, hunting and gathering animals. In our DNA are all the tools for energy creation. Through the Kreb’s cycle, we can convert ALL food to energy. We can live in excess of 40 days on water alone. We can walk 300 miles without anything other than water. Though it is occasionally not evident, we are the most highly evolved animals on Earth.
To better understand how we create more energy, we would do well to visualize a spiral. If we follow the line of the spiral we see that it moves up and then levels out, reaching an ever-increasing height. The same is true when we create energy. Our energy levels cannot simply rise straight up. We must also level out to create energy (rest).
If you have been sedentary for a long time and one day you decide to go jogging for a couple of miles, you will be tired for several days after. You will need to rest. Tiredness is the downside of the spiral. From just that one run, you have created more energy that is yours to use AFTER recovery. This increased energy is the upswing of the spiral. If you continue to run and rest, the spiral will go up and level out with the net result being a gain in energy. Our heart becomes bigger and our lungs more toned, the relevant jogging muscles are stronger and more efficient.
To return to our car analogy, our engine has become bigger and stronger. When running a couple of miles no longer challenges us we have ADAPTED to our running regimen. At this point, if we do not run faster, farther or longer we will not continue to increase our energy. Our current level of running will MAINTAIN our current level of ADAPTATION (energy level). If we stop running we will gradually go back down the spiral. If we do not allow for full recovery through proper sleep we will also see a drop in performance. Sleep is an important part of the leveling out of the spiral.
In a nutshell, we must work hard enough to go higher “up” the spiral, and then rest, through which we will adapt to higher and higher levels of energy.
You can feed all the fuel you want to a weak engine and it will still not go faster. You can cleanse the fuel lines all you want and you will not increase YOUR performance if your engine is small and weak.
We have total control of our energy level. We are responsible for creating our own energy. If you do not have any, you have created the weak engine I am talking about. It is very easy to look to cleanses and supplements, but a strong engine can run very well for a long time on junk food, much as putting cheap gas in your car often takes 100,000 miles to have a negative effect.
In our car analogy, we fixed everything but the engine and still we had no better performance. A big difference between human engines and car engines is that if you park your car in the garage for a few years, the engine remains just as powerful. The human engine, however, will actually shrink. Your entire system can get clogged by parking it on the couch too long and not taking it out for a good drive once in a while. If you only drive it to work and back it won’t continue to run well for long. You will see what I mean when you finally “floor it” and black smoke pours out of the exhaust! It may even stall! Quick, before it’s too late, let’s make this thing run right, faster, and longer.
Why don’t you have some coffee, sugar, or fruit? That ought to pick you up! How about an energy drink with some wild sounding jungle herbs? Most of us regularly look for energy in a particular food or drink and we are eventually forced to acknowledge that it does not work.
We have an epidemic of blood sugar problems (hypoglycemia) that affect an estimated 60% of this country. In fact, most companies give workers a break at 10 a.m. and often this is not because they are generous, but productivity has markedly slowed. At this point you have only been at work for two, at most three, hours! Certainly you are not already out of energy. Notice that your break room is filled with caffeine, candy, and salty and sweet carbohydrates in hopes of kicking you back into productivity.
Further notice that the great ‘medication stations”—convenience stores— that are filled from one end to the other with these items! I can fix your “Blood Sugar” problem such that you can fully access energy you already have, but that will NOT create more!
Many alternative modalities promise to remove “blocks” to your energy or increase the flow of energy. Often “cleansing” of some type is recommended. Notice that removing blocks and increasing FLOW are NOT the same as creating MORE energy. For a better understanding of energy, I shall use a car for my analogy.
Let’s say that the tube that carries gasoline to the engine (the fuel line) is clogged. The car runs poorly. When you clear the “blockage” you “increase the flow” of fuel to the engine. While this is important and I often recommend energy-flow work, you will NOT have MORE energy, but full access to the energy you already had.
How about if the carburetor is not mixing the air and gasoline correctly? Again the car runs poorly. Many vitamin and supplements companies make “increased-energy” claims based on improving your fuel mix. While supplements and diet can sometimes correct nutritional deficiencies, you will only have better fuel, not more fuel. This is very important as better fuel is necessary for high performance. Many people in third world countries suffer from malnutrition and cannot perform well. However, you and I are likely getting everything we need for our day-to-day performance and even our “weekend warrior” athletics. Body builders, high school, college and professional athletes may well need supplements if their diet is less than perfect but I’m willing to bet that quality fuel is not your problem.
For now, let’s assume that your fuel system is clean enough and you eat a good enough diet. If this is the case, and most often it is, the cause of your lack of energy is that your motor is small and inefficient and that nothing you put in the gas tank can change that!
