Four Things About Fitness I Wish I’d Known Sooner

Four Things About Fitness I Wish I’d Known Sooner
1.“Fitness” describes a capacity, not a state of being.

Saying someone is “fit” describes a capacity they have; being fit is not a thing in and of itself. “Fit” is an adjective, not a noun.

Think of it this way. A noun describes a thing, a thing that exists and has characteristics of its own. A pistachio. A walrus. Those are things. They are the same thing no matter where you encounter them: a walrus out of its natural habitat is still a walrus. No matter how incongruous the context in which it appears (“Why the fuck is there a walrus in my bathtub?”) it is still the same thing. Fitness, however, is not a thing. It does not exist, and it has no characteristics. 

Fit is an adjective. It describes something, and what it means always varies depending on where it’s used. A fit marathoner and a fit weightlifter are not the same thing. Speaking of their “fitness” describes their ability to do their own sport, but in each case it describes something wildly different. And not only are those capacities different, they don’t necessarily overlap at all.

The capacity to lift a lot of weight is not suitable or appropriate to help one complete marathons—hence, in that context, it is not fitness. The capacity to run a long way without stopping is not suitable or appropriate to help one set a new bench-press PR—hence, in that context, it is not fitness. The two athletes probably look different and certainly perform differently, but they are both fit.

This may seem like hair-splitting semantics, but it actually isn’t. Understanding that “fitness” does not exist and has literally zero innate characteristics topples the entire popular conception of what being “fit” means. The media make Fit a noun. It’s touted as a thing that exists—a specific thing that can be aspired to and achieved. Unless they’ve somehow never been exposed to modern media, the vast majority of people have at least some stereotyped ideas about the “innate characteristics” of fitness. —Six-pack abs. Thick arms in men, thin arms in women. A certain percent body-fat. Certain activities and certain foods are paired in people’s minds with a “fit” lifestyle. Maybe even certain clothes.

But this is entirely based in sloppy thinking, fantasy, media and marketing. Fitness is without characteristics. Fitness is no more about the size of your waistband than the size of your shoes.

There are as many ways to be fit as there are different things in the world that people do. And there are as many body-types associated with fitness as there are, well, body-types.

2. You’ll Probably Need To Expand Your Thinking. 

Whatever you’re doing right now in your training, odds are good that your program is going to change. No matter how great the sense of all-in-one completeness you derive from the routine you’ve found or created, in ten years you will have learned so much more, your thinking will have changed on so many topics, and your body will have changed enough, to cause you to change your approach. That’s not a bad thing, and it’s not a criticism of whatever you’re doing. Think about it: what you do now is the optimal approach to fitness-training according to your current understanding. In a year or two, you will know exponentially more, and what you think is optimal now may no longer look optimal. Your approach may be refined, tweaked, tightened up in some places, loosened in others. Or whatever. But it will change. Your thinking will expand—new knowledge will come in and shake up the settled order of your training.

That’s important to keep in mind because of our tendency to grab onto our programs or approaches and think we’ve found the One True Way.

“Man, you’ve gotta try this yoga class I’ve started doing. It’s an unchanging sequence of poses every time—same timing, same temperature in the room. Everything the same. It’s designed perfectly. Perfection: nothing to add or subtract. It’s the magic bullet—all you need wrapped up in one class. Everyone should be doing exactly this, and if you talk to me about anything else I’ll excommunicate you immediately.” That’s a pretty extreme example, but it’s too easy to tend towards that mindset in anything we do, fitness-wise.

“THIS IS IT! I’VE FOUND THE GRAIL.” Just take the guess-work out of it, and accept from the beginning that you’ll never find the grail, because there isn’t one. What you may think is the answer to all your fitness questions right now almost certainly will not be the answer anymore a decade from now. That’s not a bad thing—that’s as it should be. Help yourself along the road of continually expanding your thinking and practice by treating everything you do in your training like a tool. Firm grip on the handle, but don’t clutch it. If you clutch the handle of a tool too tightly, you wind up wielding it awkwardly.

3. You’ll Also Probably Need To Expand Your Timeframe 

We want jumpstarts and reboots and six-week transformations. We want to “kick our metabolisms into gear” and “shed pounds” and do all kinds of things that sound like rapid changes and drastic overhauls. But rapid changes generally don’t last. Think of an illustration from nature: a plant that grows quickly withers just as fast. It explodes out of its seed, spreads around, bears a yield of fruit, then dies. On the other hand, a tree grows slowly. A bit at a time. And 100 years later? It’s gargantuan. And it’s still growing a bit at a time.

We make healthy, lasting changes to our bodies more like the tree than like the plant. Expand the timeframe in which you demand results. What you’re measuring in days, start measuring in weeks. What you think of in terms of weeks, you should probably be thinking of in terms of months. And so on.

4. You Really, Really Need To Be Having Fun

I’m not saying you need to work out exclusively on playgrounds. I’m not saying you need to pause after every set of deadlifts to have sex with your workout partner against the gym wall (though I’m not not saying that.) All I’m saying is, if the attitude you bring to your training is rigid, militant and devoid of joy, you probably aren’t going to get where you want to go. It’s a long road. If you’re not deriving any joy at all from what you’re doing, it’s unlikely you’ll stay with it over the long haul.

Think of joy in your training as being equally important to getting protein in your diet. Put the same level of attention into it. Give it the same level of precedence in how you gauge your progress. It will make a difference.

If you absolutely positively can’t find any joy in what you’re doing, it means you’re doing the wrong thing, and that’s that. If you analyzed your diet and realized you were getting way too little protein, you would obviously know that you needed to change your diet. If you analyze your fitness training and realize that you’re getting no enjoyment out of it, you need to change your training. You need to find ways to move, strive and challenge yourself that compel you and that you find joy in.

It’s a long road. Actually, scratch that: it’s an infinite road. There is no final destination. You may have concrete goals, but when you reach those goals they always turn out to just be milestones. You pass them, and move on. The goals you set at one moment in time, when you finally reach them, no longer seem like enough. You’ve expanded: the old goals are small compared to you now. So you move on.

And so it goes, on and on. There is no finish-line to cross. If you put your head down and barrel onward, as if you’re just going to tough it out until you get there, you’re in for a harsh surprise. It’s an infinite road. If being on the road itself isn’t joyful, you’re bound for disillusionment.

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